


Drift Away

by JaqofSpades



Series: If the world should end today [1]
Category: Revolution (TV), Veronica Mars (TV)
Genre: F/M, M/M, Multi, Revo Redux Challenge
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-06
Updated: 2015-01-20
Packaged: 2018-01-18 08:44:03
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 12
Words: 32,791
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1421953
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JaqofSpades/pseuds/JaqofSpades
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Two months after the end of the world, Veronica Mars has finally stopped fighting.  So of course she's rescued by two bonehead soldiers in search of a mission.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> * Written for Ava Rosier's Revo Redux challenge to my prompt, Veronica Mars in the Revolution world. 'Veronica has just been taken on by a top New York lawfirm when the blackout occurs. After ten years running from Neptune, all she wants now is to survive the journey back.' 
> 
> * Still listening to Chinese Democracy by Guns n Roses. Title stolen from and dreamy mindscapes inspired by the gorgeous If the World.

*  
Fast food. Her taser. Imodium and Amoxycillin. The old LeBaron, her most faithful friend all the way through high school. Wallace. Piz. MacWeevilLogan. Even Dick fucking Casablancas. 

Her Dad, Veronica surrenders, sure now that her body simply isn't capable of crying. Two months, she had survived, two months of chasing away the despair with simple certainty of left foot, right foot, left foot, all the way home to Neptune. But four days ago, her legs had turned to jelly. She'd been too weak to run down something to eat, but had managed to crawl to a tree covered in red berries. It had seemed like a gift … right up until the stomach cramps started.

Now, she's just waiting to die, drifting in and out of the world before. 

Piz, bouncing like a puppy as he thrusts the ring box into her hands. 

Her fifteenth birthday, that haze of Mom and Lilly and Duncan and Logan smiling forever into the Neptune afternoon. 

Eighteen, and a different type of bliss as she hurtles up the PCH with Weevil, his body heat scorching her through the leather jacket and his bike shuddering between her thighs. 

Her father, lumps of raw flesh hanging from his hands after he pulled her out of that burning fridge. Her father, shimmying through the house waving Celeste Kane's cheque. Her father, dead-alive-dead-alive-dead ...

“Daddy,” Veronica moans, and smiles a little when a hand slides under the back of her head, lifting her a little to splash water over her parched lips.

“Well, somebody's kinky,” an unfamiliar voice rumbles, and panic forces her to try and bring the stranger into focus. She can't, and it all jumbles together, a half-seen image of blond hair and brown eyes and thin lips and that laugh, surely her imagination because what was there to laugh about any more? The world had ended two months ago, and this was just its death throes.

Her death throes, she realises, as she lets it all go, and admits she's lost. Neptune may as well be a million miles away, everyone she loves is dead, and there's no point fighting at all.

“Hey! You! Wake up! Drink this!”

Veronica flinches away, but she's not strong enough to turn her head, so they force something rich and warm between her lips and it burns its way to her belly. And again, and again, hours and days, until she opens her eyes, and reaches for the bowl herself.

“Okay then,” the man with the velvet rasp in his voice says. “Feeling better?”

“I'll live,” she croaks. “Thank you, I guess.”

“You guess?” he mocks, as subtle as her least favourite schoolteacher. “Gratitude for ya.”

“Look. I'd do a full on cheer if I could find my pompoms, but right now, I can't stand up. So – thanks.”

“Better,” he judges with a wry nod of his head, then raises his voice to call into the night. “Hey Bass. Your patient woke up.”

She's tiring already, so can barely lift her eyes to inspect the man making his way towards her bedroll from the far side of the fire. She immediately regrets the effort – that silken voice weaving through her delirium was seduction enough. The perfect planes of his face, the crop of golden curls – overkill, Veronica decides sourly. He could fell entire armies with that wide, white smile. 

“Sleeping Beauty awakes! Honoured to meet you, princess,” he teases. “Eat a little more, then you can go back to sleep. There's a good girl.”

She breathes a sigh of relief even as she forces her eyes wide and guileless. This type, she can handle, Veronica reassures herself, and spins a touching tale of sulky teenager wandering away from her family. Her rescuers nod and cluck and promise to mount a search party at first light, and she drifts back to sleep with a sweet, fake smile still hovering on her lips.

*

Miles jerks his head and Bass follows him away from the campfire. 

“Seventeen? She think we're stupid or something?”

Bass swallows his laugh and shakes his head. “Pretty good story though. Lies like a champion. Ten bucks her name's not even Lilly.”

“Yeah, like I'm touching that. As if it matters what your name is these days.” 

Bass scowls and kicks furiously at the dirt. Miles knows exactly what his best friend is thinking about – he can't forget it either. A teenage boy and an older man, left to rot where they fell, but the woman, and the two girls … they hadn't died quickly. The world is fucking broken, and people who might once have been halfway decent men have turned into monsters. He sighs as he thinks about their new companion and the reality of what could happen to her out here. A pretty woman on her own? Fair game, these days. And maybe there are people looking for her, or maybe there aren't. He suspects it isn't going to matter either way. 

They saved her life. She's their responsibility now.

Miles looks up to find Bass watching him, shaking his head with amused resignation.

“What?”

“She's just become our new mission, hasn't she?”

Miles glances back into the camp. He can't make out her features from here, but he's spent enough time staring at her sleeping face to know the sharp curve of her chin, that stubborn little ski-jump of a nose. He hasn't even seen her standing up, but she's so tiny he doubts she'd come past his shoulder – she could have easily passed for 16 if she hadn't opened that mouth. And he has a soft spot for a sassy woman – but he doesn't think that's what this is about, really. 

He swallows, uncomfortable with the creeping realisation. Bass had been lost in his memories for weeks before they'd found the girl. Without the routine of the camp, the orders to follow, he'd been aimless. They both had. And then the girl came, and he'd started to smile again. Laughed, even.

She'd given him his brother back, and now he owed her. It was as simple as that.

“Yeah. Guess she has.”

They're Marines, Miles rationalises. Fighting monsters is what they do.


	2. Chapter 2

The truth seeps out slowly, dribs and drabs which mean they know who she is long before she gets round to telling them her real name.

She lets them call her Lilly until the night she sees a flash of green and white, that ghostly “Veronica. Veronica!” hanging in the air. She forces herself to her feet, wobbling on unsteady legs for a few moments before she is able to make the dozen or so steps to the campfire. The blonde one – Bass – moves as if to help her, but tall and gloomy flicks him a warning glance and makes her do it herself. She's cursing him by the time she collapses onto a log nearby, but somehow, somewhere, she can hear Lilly giggling at her predicament.

“Jesus, Lilly – you sure you're up to this?” Bass asks, and her heart hurts so much she answers without thinking.

“Lilly's dead. I'm Veronica,” she admits. “I heard a noise. Thought I'd be safer here with the big, strong men.”

Miles snorts – batting her eyelashes might have been a bit much – but he also glides to his feet and prowls around the perimeter of the camp. He's stepping around her pack when three men – no, four, shit, five – leap on him, trampling her bedroll with their dirty boots, leaping at Miles with knives at the ready, stabbing, stabbing, stabbing …

Bass roars out of the trees, and he and Miles barricade her behind them, taking on knives with their fists and a brutal efficiency that leaves her terrified. They'd told her they had been soldiers, before, but she's never seen them fight. She's disconcerted for a moment, because they both wear guns, but they never draw them, kicking and punching and stomping their way to victory in less time than it took for her to figure out what the invaders were after.

One of the men – a boy, she realises later – is already dragging off their packs, pulling out clothes and her favourite book and even tossing away a bottle of liquor to clutch desperately at the few tins Miles and Bass had secreted away for emergencies. Veronica had come too close to starvation to let him escape with that, so she forces herself onto her feet and clobbers him with the tree branch Bass had been using to poke at the fire.

By the time she turns around, Bass and Miles are staring at her as if _she's_ the one that's littered the campsite with human debris. How did this happen, she needs to know, and her faithful brain supplies her with the memory of a giant rushing at Miles, while two smaller attackers surrounded Bass. 

And then it became the most terrifying, horrible, brutal, beautiful thing she had ever seen. Miles hadn't even bothered to block the punch, just reached up to seize his attacker's head between implacable hands, jerking it round until something snapped. He didn't even pause to watch him fall - he'd taken a knife from the man, and had flung it across the clearing at a shadowy figure still creeping through the brush, his attention already moving to the men attacking Bass. And if Miles was all short, sharp stabs of pure efficiency, Bass practically danced from one encounter to the next, slitting throats as if in passing.

And they're staring at _her_.

“How –?” Bass is practically goggling, eyes wider than she would have thought possible, and the giggle rises up and erupts out of her nose before she can stop it. She shakes and snorts howls until Miles grabs her by the hair, and tugs her head up to look at him.

“Hey. You're okay. We're okay,” he growls.

“No! We're not! Nothing's okay. Nothing works! These people tried to steal our food. We killed them!” she screams at him, wondering at how dense he is, how impenetrable. How could Bass bear it, to call this man brother, to let him suck out all the light and joy in the world?

She looks anywhere but his face and tries to twist away, but he holds her fast until her breathing steadies and she is thinking clearly enough to direct a furious glare up at him.

“Let go of me.”

“We're okay,” he insists once more, and this time, she can see the concern in his eyes, and the sadness. He's good at this, but hedoesn't enjoy it, those brown eyes tell her. (His mouth twitches and she knows that's not the whole truth, even if he doesn't.) But the regret is genuine, and his calm contagious.

So when they slap the boy awake, she doesn't object.

“We need to know how many more of them there are,” Miles explains softly from behind her. “It's the law of the jungle out there, Lilly.”

“Veronica,” she reminds him, and forces herself to watch as they beat the boy bloody.

*

Four women, a passel of kids between six and fifteen, and one old man too shit-shared to say boo. What the fuck were those cretins thinking, leaving that guy to guard the camp while they all rushed out to get themselves killed, Bass wants to know.

There's not as much wailing and gnashing of teeth as he would have expected, but then, only one of the women was actually here of her own accord by the sound of things. Grey stringy hair over there had wanted to know about her son, but the others had just stared at him, dead-eyed, and shuffled from one side of the camp to the other without a word.

“Creepy,” he mutters, and one corner of Miles' mouth quirks up in what he knows is agreement. Lilly, though – dammit, Veronica – is crouching down to talk to one of the kids, bleeding heart intentions stamped all over that pretty face. Girl was still unsteady on her own feet, but she'd managed to keep up as they followed young Jeremy's directions back to his father's fucking harem. Now she was intent on getting to know 'em, every single one of these useless mouths to feed.

And Miles won't meet his eyes, and he knows what that means. They're staying, or taking this crew with them, or doing something else equally stupid. 

He'd feel better if it was because of that sexy mouth, or the apple-shaped ass that deserved a fucking picture frame, but he knows it's not. Save one girl, now Miles has gotta save them all. He might as well just rent a flag and call it a country, Bass chafes.

They're never getting to Chicago now.

*

There's a pool nearby, Taylor confides shyly. We could wash.

Veronica smiles her agreement but sighs internally as she remembers the simple luxury of a private bath. She has slept, cooked, walked, toileted and washed alongside another human being for every day of the last month, and it's getting way old. Taylor's a smart kid - aeronautics major at NYU, she'd confessed - but she seems to have adopted Veronica as her personal saviour, and refuses to go anywhere alone. Not that Miles and Bass would let that happen, anyway. To the others, it must feel just like they've got new jailers.

Veronica's not quite sure they haven't.

Bass perches up on the rise above the small pond, and doesn't even pretend not to watch them. His brows pull together in mock concern when Veronica glares at him, but he can't quite hide the wicked smirk.

Veronica has resolved just to splash her hands and face when Taylor lifts her dirt-stained dress over her head and wades into the water. She sinks down into the water with a groan. "God, Veronica. You have to come in. It feels so good to be clean."

Clean. She'd forgotten what that feels like. Dammit.

Veronica glances back over her shoulder to find Bass grinning widely.

“Sure you don't need a bath?” he calls, but it's clear most of his attention is on Taylor, whose firm, high breasts are floating on the water as she tips her head backwards to immerse her hair in the still pool. Something dark and contrary twists in Veronica's belly, and it's plain stupid, because she's still not fully recovered or very steady on her feet. But she strips off her clothes and wades in anyway.

When she falls, Bass' shout brings Jeremy and Miles running.

Veronica screeches at them to stay away – Bass with his hot eyes is bad enough, but the kid had a crush bigger than the knot on his skull, and Miles. Miles is the one who makes her feel exposed. Miles who forces himself to look at her face as he hauls her to her into his arms, and Miles whose voice dips to a completely different register when he strips off his shirt to let her cover herself.

It doesn't help. She's still naked, and they both still know it.

And when Bass notices them knowing it, the smile slides from his face. It's surprise at first, almost disbelief, because Veronica jokes and teases him, while Miles gets the sharp edge of her tongue. He's the golden boy, and Miles the black cloud. The storm, Veronica's unhelpful mind offers as she tries to avoid the reality of whipcord lean arms and a ridiculously hard belly and the heat of him burning away every last iota of good sense.

Veronica gasps a little and turns her head into Miles' shoulder, forcing Bass to look at Miles instead. He has to watch his friend trying not to look the girl in his arms, trying to ignore the feel of all that wet skin. Has to watch him stiffen every time she moves, and for someone who knows him the way Bass does, it might as well be a neon sign. 

Miles is desperately, thoroughly hard, and it's that, more than anything, that makes Bass lose his head to a wave of ice cold fury.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry about the delay. The final two (or possibly three) chapters will arrive fairly more quickly :D (And the rating has changed to E for reasons of my complete inability not to surrender to certain mental pictures.)

Miles has barely cleared the water when Bass wrestles Veronica away from him and into his own arms. He sets her down next to the meagre pile of clothes, and busies himself with covering her up.

“I've got this,” he snaps at Miles without turning to look at him. He flings Miles' wet t-shirt away from Veronica's shivering body, whipping off his own overshirt to dry her off. 

Veronica is protesting – girl can't take two steps without complaining – but he simply hands her the threadbare bra and guides her jeans over her feet. No panties, he catalogues from habit. You should be enjoying this, he tells himself. Gorgeous, naked woman. Enjoy it!

It only makes him angrier. He can feel his outraged heart stewing and snapping, jeering at him, howling truths he's been ignoring for years.

Miles swears and pushes past them, not even bothering to pull on the drenched shirt, water dripping from his hair and chest and … he can't think about Miles. Not now.

Veronica is staring up at him strangely and he forces himself to tease her, to be light and easy and Bass again.

“I didn't force soup into you every few hours for a week so that you could drown yourself at the first opportunity,” he says, and Veronica just grimaces.

The brunette – Tracey? Tara? - creeps closer, mumbling apologies between bouts of sobbing. She's still nude, but it's the fear on her face that cuts him. There was no danger here. He'd been angry, fucking furious, in fact, but that was all Miles. He'd never take it out on anyone else.

He clucks and smiles and charms Taya out of her tears and back into her clothes, then insists on carrying Veronica back to the camp despite her increasingly sharp protestations.

“Put me the fuck down,” she hisses, sinking a heel into his ribs to punctuate the demand. “C'mon, Bass, you're overreacting. I just slipped.”

Maybe she's right. Maybe she had just slipped on the muddy bottom, and would have found her legs eventually. Maybe he hadn't provoked her into going in in the first place. Maybe he hadn't been rigid with jealousy, and completely fucking confused about who he was jealous of.

But God, how he wants to take it out on Miles anyway.

*

They'd given Jeremy and old Jack their handguns, and told them to guard the camp before wading off into the undergrowth together. Veronica gives it ten minutes before she backs into the enclosing trees and follows the simple smack of fists on flesh.

She'd like to smack some fucking sense into them, that's for sure. Men and their stupid, petty, possessive bullshit …

Fuck.

It's not what she thought.

It's not what she thought at all.

Miles is leaning back against a tree, feet wide and braced, cock gleaming with spit in the late afternoon sun. Bass is fucking the girl from behind, pistoning into her like he's trying to kickstart her fucking engine. 

Veronica's gasp is loud, but she's lucky. No one seems to be listening right now. The girl – Taylor, she realises with a sick feeling – is moaning like a bitch in heat, enjoying Bass so much that Miles has to tug her mouth back to his cock every now and then.

“Come on, Tara, suck him good,” Bass catcalls. “Multitasking, my CO used to call it!”

Miles manages a chuckle, even as his face seizes in pleasure. “Might wanna pull off,” Veronica hears him warn, but Taylor simply shrugs and sucks him harder. Miles jerks into her mouth for several long minutes before his knees give out, dumping him in a satisfied heap at the base of the tree. 

Bass hoots in triumph and picks up the tempo, ass cheeks working furiously as he fucks Taylor so hard she has to grab Miles' knees to brace herself. Bass seems to move forward with every thrust, closer to Miles each time, eyes locked on each other. They're having a conversation that has nothing to do with the girl between them, Veronica starts to realise.

“Isn't this better than fighting, brother? She's just another blonde,” Bass asks urgently, and Miles shakes his head as if he can't quite agree, but, but … there's a smile on Miles' face, tender and rueful and apologetic, things she'd never dreamed he could be. 

Jesus, Veronica thinks. Why the fuck are there tears in her eyes? As if she cared who these boneheads chose to fuck. It's just the day she's had; and disappointment. She'd been convinced they were decent guys – hero complex, maybe, but decent. And how she hates being wrong.

It would have driven her crazy, once. Made her do something stupid. But even before things went to hell, she'd learnt to walk away. So she's gonna put on her big girl panties and get the fuck out of there.

Even if they were talking about her, the douchewad cretins. But it's still not her business, so she'll just leave.

Walk away, she begs herself.

She's turning on her heel (good girl, Veronica, smart girl), when Bass gasps out a string of curses and empties his load all over Taylor's back. She grits her teeth and actually manages to take a few steps before the red rage swamps her. Disrespectful pig, she fumes. Pretty damn sure that's not what Taylor signed up for. If she signed up for it at all, a vicious little voice whispers, and _fuck no_.

Veronica fucking Mars pounces from her blind spot, grabs the reins and heads straight back into the clearing.

“I'm sorry, did I miss the part where you two charge for protection?” she chimes sweetly, her vengeful heart cackling at the way they both freeze.

“Do your fly up, Miles. You've pretty much cashed your cheque for today,” she says snidely. “And you. So very _distracted_ , Bass. Anyone would think you weren't really that … interested.”

He flushes at the insinuation and she just smiles serenely back. Had she ever got round to telling them that she'd been a detective? That ferreting out hidden secrets was once her bread and butter?

Maybe not.

Veronica shrugs and turns her attention to Taylor.

“You okay?”

The younger woman blushes furiously and inches away from the confrontation. “Um. Sorry. I didn't mean to … I just ...”

“Oh, don't worry. Girls gotta do what a girl's gotta do. I understand.” I might despise you, her scorn suggests, think you're weak and pathetic, but I do understand.

Miles looks up from where he's been stuffing himself back into his pants to gape at her.

“Now hang on just a damn minute! That's not what this was about. Tara -”

“Taylor,” Veronica says flatly.

“-uh, Taylor followed us out here, and one thing led to another. You make it sound like we ...”

“What, exactly, Miles? Took advantage of a girl with nothing to assure her own safety other than her body? Who had been kept as a sex slave until less than a week ago? Who is probably thinking you two are just more of the fucking same?”

Bass is spluttering with rage, but Miles had grown paler and paler throughout her speech, his obvious horror pricking her conscience a little. It's not like she actually believes the things she's saying, not exactly, but the virago inside is too angry to let it slide. Ignorance is no fucking defence, she wants to yell. Wise the fuck up, dudes.

She'd shake them, if she could. Set her dog on them, or torture them with her taser. But … BackUp died in her second year in New York. Her taser is a useless lump of plastic in the bottom of her backpack. And these men tower over her, their physical supremacy undeniable.

There's only one type of power left in the world any more. She doesn't have it, and Taylor doesn't have it, and not even Jeremy has it. But these two emotional black holes with their guns and their hard stares and their deadly skills – they do. They could grab it and make things better for people. So yeah, she's not sorry.

“You gotta think. Less cock, more brain,” she says tiredly, the rage starting to dissipate. Bass, though, is just getting started.

“Hey! You came looking for us, woman. We didn't exactly make you watch – we didn't think you'd even know,” he says heatedly.

Veronica rolls her eyes. “Not the point, douchebag. So not my business,” she stresses, staring up into his face. “Except, you know, the part where I'm trying to make sure you're not trying to create your own little harem here. Consent fucking optional.”

Perhaps she imagines the hurt that flickers in his eyes before they settle into that glacial, frozen blue. His lips thin and he's another man altogether. A dangerous, frightening stranger, Veronica realises.

“And how, exactly, are you going to achieve that, hmm? Nag us into it? Tell me, Veronica. Were you this much of bitch when we saved your life?” 

Veronica smiles.

“A bitch? Me?” She moves closer and mouths the words just inches from his matinee-idol face. “Fuck, yes.”

She doesn't bother to look back, not even when Miles chokes on a laugh as Bass subsides into stunned silence. If someone asks, she'll swear she didn't hear it.

“We're so screwed,” could mean _anything_ , and the way Miles had moaned “oh yeah,” in response certainly didn't send a shiver all the way down her spine, Veronica tells herself.

*

Taylor blushes when Veronica taps her on the shoulder and pulls her away from the two girls she's still trying to tell apart. (Both teenagers, both pretty under too many bruises, both far too scared.)

“Hey. I was a bit … mean before. Just wanted to apologise,” she says haltingly. “Sometimes I get ...” her explanation grinds to a halt. She's not even sure there's a word for her ridiculous need to grind her enemies to dust. 

Especially when they're supposed to be her friends.

“You were kind of harsh,” Taylor says sulkily. “But ..” she stares into the middle distance, where Bass and Miles are showing Jeremy how to skin a rabbit. (Miles is showing Jeremy. Bass is glaring at Veronica.)

“You were right, you know. I've been thinking about it, and fuck, I hate feeling like ...” she sniffles a little, and scrubs away a stray tear. “But I thought, maybe if we … looked after them, they'd stick around. Beats starving,” she says bitterly. “Or having a knife stuck in your side as they fuck you.”

Veronica closes her eyes and tries to remember the seminar she'd taken on counselling rape victims. But the only thing she can remember is hot breath in her ear, and the way his blood had sprayed into her face when she had stuck her little switchblade into the side of his neck.

“Yeah, but .. look, this sounds harsh. But I wasn't really saying that for you. I was saying that for them,” she blurts.

“They could be really good at this hero shit. They know how to make people work together, how to keep us all safe. But …” 

Taylor sighs and nods. No need to explain. Men. 

“What'd you do before all this, Veronica?”

“Law student. I'd actually just accepted my first job when it all stopped.”

“Huh. Wouldn't have picked you as a lawyer. You seem to know a lot about people,” Taylor says wearily. “They're lucky to have you, you know.”

But they don't, she wants to say. They don't have me. But the words won't quite come, and just the thought of it sets her to squirming like the world's worst fucking liar.


	4. Chapter 4

Miles finds her on the edge of the camp after what passes for dinner. He sidles up, hunkers down next to her without even an apologetic glance, and sidles into an explanation.

“We didn't mean to .. take advantage,” he starts. “It's not like that.”

Veronica wants to ask him what it _was_ like, but she figures that's what he's here for, so she bites her tongue and waits. She's had time to think, and while nothing she said was wrong, she might have overreacted a little. Best to let him talk.

“He took a fucking swing at me, Veronica. Just for having my hands on you. And I wanted to put him down, too, and not just for fun, you know? And when that girl came looking for us ...”

Yeah. She knows what happened next. Like Skinamax in her brain, thank you very much. He can just sidle his ass back to the others if he's going to make her think about this.

“Bass and I – we've been best friends our whole lives. Even before we enlisted. And after all the shit we went through - we're brothers, Veronica.”

There's no one in her life like that. Not any more, and fuck him for twisting the knife. 

“So that's what they're calling it these days,” she mutters, then dismisses it with a choppy wave of her hand. “Sorry. Ignore Grumpy Cat here. You were saying?”

Miles eyes her suspiciously, obviously turning over what she said, then deciding to ignore it.

“We're brothers, and that has to come first. So when we, uh, like a girl – you know, the same girl -”

It hadn't been real, until he said it. Much easier to tell herself she was imagining things. Veronica bolts upright and is halfway across the camp before he grabs her arm, spinning her around. And of course, Bass is there too. Right behind her, tugging at her opposite hand like two wolves fighting over the carcass of a lamb.

“Christ, Miles. I thought you said you'd straighten things out?”

“There's nothing to straighten out,” Veronica spits through gritted teeth. “You didn't think through what happened with Taylor. Okay. Done. Moving on.”

Miles snorts in disgust, but Bass laughs, the richness of it rolling over her skin.

“Come on, Veronica. She's a nice kid, but – she was just there. You know it had nothing to do with Taylor.”

“Really, Bass? Jesus. I just can't with you two.” The words jump of her mouth before she gets a chance to consider how they might take it, but Miles still manages to surprise her.

“Yeah. Exactly. We can't – you and me, or you and Bass, it would end badly. We've been there before. So … Taylor. And we're sorry for not thinking about that other stuff, but ...” he rolls his shoulders in obvious discomfort, then sneaks a glance at her that makes him look seven years old. “Maybe that's why we need you around. To think about the shit the Marines don't train you for.”

Veronica swallows, unable to deny the truth of it. She's not sure her law degree is going to help much, but yeah – they could all do with a psychologist. Particularly the two boneheads looming either side of her, her entire body vibrating to the strange dynamic between them.

Yeah, this was going end well, allright.

“I need to get to California,” is all she can say. “I need to know what happened to my family. But -”

“We'll see about getting you there safe,” Miles interrupts. “We're heading for Chicago ourselves. Maybe we can hook you up with another group going further west. That's gotta be a better route than through the frigging desert.”

She can't argue with that, and the pragmatic part of her knows that she's going to have to do this, again and again and again, if she's got a prayer of getting back to Neptune. She's just going to have to stay out of their bullshit, and keep her eyes on the prize.

Bass throws both arms around her, his megawatt grin shaming the sunset just starting to streak the sky.

“Westward fucking ho!” he yodels into the night, breaking off with a pained yelp when Miles smacks him in the back of head. Marine shit, Veronica surmises as she tunes out the lecture about giving away their position.

She's more concerned about the way her heart is swelling in her chest, threatening to choke her, and the tears stinging in her eyes. She needs to be able to walk away. Needs not to care.

But her ghosts are filling the wood tonight, and this time, it's a boy on the beach, gently poking holes in her brittle shell. “You're a marshmallow, Veronica Mars. A Twinkie,” he hoots in her minds eye, and the tears spill over.

“Veronica?” Miles asks quietly, and she just shakes her head. She can't share this. Not now. But she leans into him a little and drags in the woodsmoke smell that infiltrates all their clothes and tells herself, one day. One day she'll let herself be a marshmallow again.

But until then … she'll pitch in. Help out. Then get on with leaving. It's not marshmallow-Veronica they're jonesing over anyway, she can't help thinking as she allows herself to nestle into the warm little spot between them. 

*

Miles tries not to watch Veronica as she moves around the camp, her sharp little jokes and flashing smile driving away the nervous tension that flares every time he and Bass do so much as fart. There's a tow-headed kid hanging onto her arm – Mrs Baker's youngest but damned if he can remember the name – and beside her, the current thorn in his fucking side. Taylor.

Least he can remember her name, now. 

Both he and Bass had been avoiding the girl since last week's foray into really fucking stupid. They'd pulled her aside to apologise – tried to make it clear that she wasn't under any kind of obligation – and he figures she got the message, since she'd been snippy ever since. S'okay, though. Vaguely pissed sits easier with him than all those brittle smiles.

Though he'd take a million of those over what happened last night. He'd seen the book fall of out of the girl's sleeping roll, just tumble into the undergrowth behind, so he'd gone to pick it up, to make sure she didn't lose it. He'd glanced at the cover, and – it'd been Fantastic Mr Fox, okay? His favourite when he was a kid, and he'd flicked through a few pages, not even realising.

The girl had been laying there, completely rigid. So fucking scared she was almost blue in the face from not breathing. He couldn't figure out why, at first, and then she shuffled herself sideways on the bedroll. Making room. 

He'd known people were brutalising kids. He'd buried enough little corpses. Seeing that though – that tiny child just expecting him to climb right on – his stomach had lurched in horror. He'd dropped the book next to her head and backed out of the camp, reeling, drowning in half-digested rabbit stew and the grinding, horrific shame.

Was someone, somewhere doing this to his little niece? Was Rachel staring numbly up the sky while some Neanderthal pumped away, just so she could get the kids something to eat? Would Ben have the balls to fucking object – or was he already dead?

He'd sounded like a wounded animal, Bass had said. Hadn't been able to speak he'd been retching so hard, but when it stopped, when he could finally stand again …

“We gotta do it, Bass. Someone's gotta,” he'd pleaded, and Bass had agreed, said whatever it was, they would, they could do it together.

“Whatever you need, brother. Right here. I got your back.”

Hope you mean that brother, Miles thinks as he watches Veronica move from person to person. Because it all starts here. Starts today.

“We're gonna have a meeting,” he'd said. “Round the campfire after dinner. You think you could talk to the women for me? Make sure they all turn up? Need to set some ground rules.”

“Yes sir, General Matheson,” she'd sassed, and he was so fucking relieved to have things started that he didn't bother to correct her. Not like she listened, anyway. Damned nickname would probably dog him to the grave – even Jeremy was calling him that now.

Kid might not be so impressed once he gets the harsh end of some military discipline, he figures. He needs it. They all need it.

'Cause he was going to war, and they'd just become soldiers.

*

“Tomorrow we're gonna start training,” Miles says, and the moron doesn't even smile.

Bass winces and thinks of all the ways they could have approached this. Explain, you stupid fuck. Tell 'em why they need to train, he begs silently, then darts an imploring glance at Veronica.

She simply raises her eyebrows and pointedly returns her attention to Miles. 

It's not his fucking plan – he's just along for the ride – but Bass pushes himself to his feet and clears his throat anyway.

“Miles and I would die to protect anyone in this camp,” he stresses. “But the thing is – that might not be enough.” He looks around, and every last person is waiting to hear what he's going to say next.

“Who's going to protect you then? Who's going to fight off the sort of bastards who'd -” he breaks off, knowing they can all finish that sentence, even if no one wants to. He stares at Miles, willing him to catch the ball and run with it. 

“You are,” his friend barks. “We're gonna train you, so if the time comes that you have to fight, you know how. Female doesn't have to mean defenceless. Taylor.”

Bass shuts his eyes in a moment of chagrin when Miles barks the name of the pain-in-the-ass brunette. Don't ask her to do a demo, don't ask, don't ask, he begins to pray, then quits with a wide grin of despair when Miles jerks his head in a familiar command to square up.

“Bass is going to rush her. Taylor and I are going to show you how to stop him.”

Why not Veronica, Bass thinks darkly as Taylor glares at him. At least she'd smile. Maybe.

Two hours later, Miles has dumped him on his back six times, and Taylor has managed it twice. The last time, she'd actually pulled the move so smoothly he'd been taken by surprise. Her hoot of delight helped soothed his sore pride, and he got his own back with a choke hold they hadn't learnt yet.

“Don't be getting overconfident,” he teased her. “Lots to learn yet. But ...”  
He got her to reverse the move on him and showed her the quick upward sweep that would break the grip of most casual assailants.

“Now. Hard. No mercy!”

“No mercy,” she hollers, and adds an over-the-shoulder flip that Miles hadn't even demonstrated. She had training before, he realises slowly.

She'd just been too scared to use it.

Maybe Miles isn't as clueless as he looks, Bass concedes wryly. Taylor isn't scared any more. She's overconfident, and clumsy, and too hyped up, but that'll pass. Scared doesn't.

He looks around the camp – the four teenagers, almost simmering with vicious glee as they fling Jeremy again and again, Veronica and Jeremy's elder sister facing off, and Miles patiently talking Ma Baker and the dumpy Asian girl through the steps of a takedown. 

They're own little militia, he smirks.

“Laughing at your own jokes?” 

Veronica drops down on the ground next to him, each breath rattling in her throat.

“Call the crazy wagon. Sure you're not working yourself too hard?” 

“Maybe. Possibly yes. But – we needed this. So much.”

Bass can't help but agree.

Veronica looks out at the darkening night for a long minute, then back at him.

“When I was a kid, my Dad used to call me his action figure daughter. All badass, you know, despite being small? But I never did get around to any self-defence stuff – just relied on good sense and my taser. But I used to carry around this switchblade someone gave me for my birthday once.”

Bass winces. He's heard a few different versions of this story, and not one has ended well.

“So 'bout a week after it all stopped, these guys break into my apartment. Big guys – one of 'em actually threw me right across the room. They had these big garbage bags and just scooped everything they wanted into them – all my tinned stuff, my nice cutlery, even my laptop, though god knows what use that was to them. Even took my fucking engagement ring right off my finger.”

Bass stills. She'd been engaged. That means the boyfriend is either gone, or dead. Fuck.

“And then they raped me. And the thing was – I had my knife in my hand the whole time. Once they got their pants down – could have stuck it pretty much anywhere I wanted. But I didn't. I just lay there, and let them do whatever they wanted.”

He pretends not to hear the snuffly little breath.

“Someone needed to tell me it was okay, I think. Okay to stab the bastards. Because I would have. I just – it's like I was waiting for permission,” she says shakily.

Veronica swipes at her eyes almost guiltily, and then turns her shaky smile on him. “That's what you're doing here, you know. Giving them permission. Telling them it's okay to fight back. That's even more important than showing us how.”

Bass can barely force a smile out at that, so he rubs her back, and prays his touch will tell her how fucking sorry he is. But it's a mistake. He should never give himself time to think.

Socialisation. Group acceptance of the dominant morality, his memory prods. Moving right fucking on, he snarls internally, gut churning with disquiet. He's so busy pulling Veronica up to her feet and ushering her back towards the main group, he almost misses it.

That vile little voice that he can't ignore sometimes. It's saved his life in firefights, even as it pushed him to put his gun in his mouth the night he buried his entire family. Nasty thoughts that'd he'd normally lock up tight in his hindbrain. Why the fuck is he hearing it now?

Hmm, it considers. Useful to know. People would rather bend the knee than fight. 

Bass pushes it aside and promises himself he'll talk to Miles about it later. Must be his turn to be the voice of reason.


	5. Chapter 5

_Fourteen weeks after the Blackout_

Three weeks, and the lessons finally seem to be sinking in. Dodge, drop, pull. Front stance for a mulekick, sideways for a roundhouse. That flick of the wrist that sends her knife halfway across a clearing to nail the target dead centre.

“Woah!” Bass marvels, and Veronica tries not smirk. He'd been barking at her all week - “commit to your punches, woman!” and “it's a gun, not a freaking poisonous snake!” - so she's damn well going to take the ego boost.

“I had a good teacher,” she shrugs, then rolls her eyes as Bass flashes his shit-eating grin at Miles. These two. Proof positive that testosterone rots your brain.

“Didn't say it was you,” she throws over her shoulder as she prises the long-handled knife Bass had given her from the tree. Eli was right. Locked in or no, throwing a switchblade is a crapshoot compared to hitting a target with this beauty. Something to do with balance, she expects, though it's easy to get romantic and wonder about purpose and utility and the soul of a knife. A switchblade is a hidden jab in a half-lit street, but this - every contour is designed to feel perfectly at home in her hand, and let it fly true. 

And the fact that that's the type of shit getting her romantic these days is just … disturbing. 

She'd been able to ignore it, before. Dedicated student, up-and-coming lawyer, carefully cultivating her New York cool and sealing it with Piznarski's perfectly middle-of-the-road diamond … she'd learnt the hard way what happened when you indulged that sick, hot thrill. Adrenaline junkie, she'd told someone once, but hardly the whole story, is it Veronica? There's addicted, there's high … and then there's this.

The way her body clenches at the thud of flesh on flesh, or flutters at a pained grunt. The way her mind knows it should be appalled and revolted, but each time comes a little closer to surrendering to to the white-hot flood of arousal.

And its not even her libido she's worried about about. (She's been ignoring that bitch for years.) Because these people. What do Bass and Miles call it? The mission. Every day she stays here, every squabble she settles, every kid she pulls into her lap - it threatens to become hers too.

She needs to head west, and soon.

*

They find the wagon first. Busted axle, half overturned on the rocks, and horses long gone. (Seriously. They were using fucking _horses_.) The smear of blood on the top seat tells him it hadn't gone well for whoever was driving, and the presence of a dirty stuffed animal, half soaked in blood, makes him shake with rage.

And then he hears the telltale shuddery gasp of someone trying not to breathe.

Miles backs out of the clearing a little, flicking a signal in Bass' direction, then starts to loop around through the gully. Within minutes, he's staring at a small huddle of humanity, two adults and what he thinks are two children, flat against the ground, staring out into the clearing.

“Uh. Hi,” Bass snarks, and fuck, can he not be serious for one freaking moment, because it's obvious these people are no threat. He has no idea whose blood that was, but anyone hiding in a clearing, sheltering two anklebiters with their bodies while the big, bad men prowl about … would it hurt the fucker to be nice?

“We're not going to hurt you,” Miles says flatly. “Might even be able to help.” 

The man – he's a big dude, but still manages to looked like a spooked rabbit – lurches to his feet and puts himself between them and his family. No gun, though, Miles notes. Not even a knife, by the look of him.

“Got a camp back through the woods a way. You're welcome to come sit by the fire a bit, clean up. Me and my buddy here are just heading out to catch something for dinner, but ask for Veronica and she'll look after you.” 

Bass interrogates him with an incredulous stare that Miles just ignores. As if this guy could even find their camp by himself. They've been here two weeks now, long enough to warrant screens good enough that most people would walk straight past without seeing anything but trees and bushes. And something about the broad, open face – he's not most people.

“They took our food supplies. And our horses,” the stranger says dumbly. His wife is sitting up warily, still keeping the children behind her. Doesn't work, though.

“They took Basil,” the boy wails, tears shimmering in his voice. The girl next to him – big sister, Miles reckons, all of seven or eight – clucks to him, but looks equally devastated.

“You named the horse Basil?”

The sobs taper away, fading to frowns as the kids pluck up the courage to answer his perplexed friend. Typical Bass, that was. Half sincerity, half carefully calculated disarmament - Miles would let him do all the talking if he wasn't so fucking unpredictable. Couldn't know what would come out of his mouth from one minute to the next, or if he'd speak up at all.

Must be an even-numbered day, because he's mugging it for all he's worth, all bewildered blue eyes and scratching at his head. Miles tries to hide his own grin, but he can't deny it. The fucker is adorable when he wants to be. And it works on girls of every age, apparently, because big sister is almost giggling now.

“No, silly. The horses were Buttercup and Wesley. Javier's fox was called Basil. Basil Brush, my mama called him.”

“Like the cartoon character!”

“Yeah! But – they took him.” And the boy's bottom lip is wobbling again, right about the time Miles remembers the bloodsoaked plush animal that had fallen down into the wagon. Could'a been a fox, once upon a time.

Miles hunkers down a bit while still keeping his distance from the little family. “How's about we have a look for Basil while your mom and dad decide whether or not they want to come with us. They have to make sure to keep you guys safe.”

The little girl's face implodes at that. “They're not our Mom and Dad. This is Janette and Tony. They're taking us back to Mom and Dad.”

“Yeah?”

She nods firmly as if it's the one truth in her world. “Can you get Buttercup and Wesley back for us? Tony says we need them because Las Vegas is too far to walk.”

When he's done coughing, Miles just nods helplessly. The horses are probably roasting over a fire by now, but she's a kid. He's going to humour her. Looks like these guys have found help whether they want it or not.

“O-kay then. You tell Tony and Janette to come back to our camp, and tomorrow, we'll start looking for your horses. Deal?”

The pint-size negotiator spits in her hand and holds it out. He takes it warily, ignoring her frown at his failure to spit first. “Deal.”

*

“We're _what_?”

Bass winces as Veronica hits a frequency bats have abandoned. Miles shakes his head – don't wanna hear it - but like that's gonna stop the woman. 

“Heading out at first light to scout around a bit. Maybe find whoever it was attacked them. Looking for the horses.”

Veronica looks at Bass, who shrugs halfheartedly. This is a stupid plan. He knows it. She knows it. Only Mr Fucking Chivalry over there is ignoring the fact.

“Nah, man, I agree with Veronica. Rescuing people is one thing. Going after the sons of bitches who attacked them is another – we have a camp to defend here. Let's not buy trouble,” Bass tries.

“Law of averages, dickhead. They get away with it once, or twice, they're gonna keep trying. We kill 'em here, in our camp, our people are vulnerable. We chase 'em down out there ...”

Bass grunts in reluctant agreement. Of the two of them, Miles always was the strategist. And he can see the logic in it, no matter what how much trouble they might be buying. Dammit.

“You stay to protect the camp. Veronica and Taylor come with me. And the new guy, I guess. So we know we've got the right fucking people.”

And underneath it, another layer of logic, 'cept this hasn't been shared with Veronica. Training is one thing. Blooded is another. They need to know if the women have got what it takes.

Veronica looks from Miles to him and back to Miles with suspicion in her eyes. Whether or not she can put a man down remains to be seen, but one thing he does know. Veronica Mars is dangerous as fuck. She can pick a lie at a hundred paces, and dance rings around you 'til you're desperate to tell her the truth.

Note to fucking self: don't ever lie to Veronica. It won't end well, Bass thinks, and heads back to the campfire to give Jeremy and Mrs B the heads up about tomorrow.

*

Miles holds up five fingers, and points to each man in turn: three still sleeping by the campfire, a so-called lookout dozing under a tree at the other end of the camp, and youngish guy wearily pushing something around in the cooking pot.

It had been a simple matter of returning to where the wagon had been abandoned, and following the shoeprints back to the camp. The two huge animals had nearly given them away, turning around to nicker gratefully at their previous owner. Get us outta here, they seemed to be saying. Miles is actually considering it, now – not cause the kids like 'em, he reassures himself, but because Tony is right – horseback's gotta be quicker than shanks' pony. Plus, you know. Farming and stuff. They use horses for that, right?

He sends Veronica round to despatch the guard, and sends Taylor over to the cook boy. “Deal with 'em,” he says, and waits to find out how they choose to do it.

He's kinda surprised when both men hit the deck, dead, before he can blink. He'd expected some sort of fancy plan from Veronica, at least. Minimise bloodshed or something. 

Instead, she steps out from behind the tree and slits his throat.

Taylor is less efficient, choosing to use the thin piece of wire he'd fashioned for her. Cook boy is just as dead, though, and it was almost soundless.

Not quite, though, he thinks as he moves quickly to the formerly sleeping men, the biggest of whom had jumped to his feet with a roar. He charges Taylor like a wounded bull, and she turns to face him, knife out. 

Good girl, Miles smiles in approval. He's tempted to let her try him, but then he remembers how shaky he was after his first kill. Next time, he thinks, slamming his knife straight into the man's windpipe as he barrels past. He gurgles as he dies, and Taylor is suddenly stark white, crumpling to the ground.

“Veronica!” Miles barks, and moves to pull Taylor to her feet, tipping his canteen into her mouth and over her cheeks. She rushes to take her friend but Miles shakes his head. “I've got her! You deal with those fuckers.”

The two remaining men had leapt out of their bedrolls and were backing away towards the horses. Both were armed, one with a shotgun and the other waving a strange, long-handled machete. Shame he looks more likely to chop off his own arm than hurt someone with it, Miles thinks viciously, and starts to move round to cut them off.

He's too slow, though. Big Tony looms behind, the point of a knife at shotgun guy's throat. Machete guy backs away when Tony swings the man, shotgun and all, in his direction, and Veronica is behind him, her knife already bloody.

“Yay team,” Miles says, genuinely proud.

“Let's be getting on home, the -”

He hears it before he sees it. The displacement of the air, the wheeze of someone swinging something big. A shovel, he thinks. They should take – 

“Bass,” he gasps as the world splinters.

*

It's Tony who drags Miles back to camp. Veronica hadn't even been introduced to the guy, but there had to be something about bonding through disaster. Afterwards, she and Taylor don't want to move away from the comfort the big man offers, the quiet vigil so at odds with Bass' deadly intensity. Six, she keeps thinking. There had been six.

Now there are six bodies in that camp, but that won't help Miles, still unconscious, or Bass, slowly losing his mind. If she has ever had a doubt of what they are to each other, it has just been vanquished. Brother, they call each other. Best friend. Clearly not, Veronica snorts. Lovers. More than that, even. Completely fucking co-dependent, the psychologist in her points out. Any woman that comes between them will never be allowed to approach this. She'd be stupid to even think about it. 

Even now, twelve hours later, Bass is still stretched out beside the unconscious Miles, bolting upright at every snuffle and sigh, bathing his forehead in between bouts of begging the man to wake up. No one else gets within arms length, not that they dare.

Except Veronica. She's that stupid.

“You have to eat, Bass. Miles needs you to take charge,” Veronica guilt trips him ruthlessly. “Don't leave it all up to us. We're helpless without you.”

Helpless as anyone who killed three men today can be, she adds to herself, still trying to digest the fact. She'd posted Jeremy and Taylor at either ends of the camp, and armed them both with Bass and Miles' precious guns. Shoot on sight, she'd told them, because until they had Bass and Miles back … 

She refuses to contemplate what happens if Miles doesn't wake up. Because Bass' eyes are glassy with grief, as if there's nothing worth looking at if his soulmate isn't looking too.

Veronica fills the time with little things, then decides she may as well tackle the big stuff if the two men can't. Janette hadn't meant to let it slip, she's sure, but she'd been staring at Miles' gaping headwound at the time. “Just like Chicago,” she had mumbled.

Veronica had locked it away, but now, with nothing to do but wait, she seats herself next to Janette at the campfire, and asks about their children. 

“Oh, they're not ours,” Janette is quick to explain. “Tony and I weren't blessed that way,” she smiles sadly, her hand never once stopping in its soothing path over the girl's long, black hair.

She'd been a flight attendant, taking delivery of the kids at O'Hare airport after they'd spent the winter holiday with their grandparents in Chicago. It had been the favourite part of her job, flying with the unaccompanied minors, Janette confesses. But she'd been in a bad mood that day, and they'd been mischievous little imps, less than keen to get home to Mom and Dad in Vegas. They'd been about to board when six-year-old Luz had dashed away to hide. 

Janette found the girl just minutes after their flight had been forced to depart, and just minutes before the lights started to flicker.

And then they'd stood by the window and watched as the planes started to fall out of the sky.

“She saved our lives,” Janette whispers, the words clearly a mantra by now. She and her husband didn't have children of their own, and any family to miss them. Javier and Luz did. 

“It wasn't a hard decision, in the end. A child needs her mama. And they're my responsibility,” Janette explains almost apologetically. “So we promised we'd get them home.” 

“Vegas?” Veronica questions numbly, her mind racing over the map. Most of the way, something inside of her sings. If she just goes with them – it will get her most of the way, and she won't have to be alone.

Janette nods gravely. “Yes. But surely, those stories about the Plains can't be true. We're more worried about making it through the desert.”

Veronica hasn't heard any stories, so they don't frighten her. But she remembers the desert, endless waves of heat sizzling in the rearview mirror of the Le Baron. And this time she won't be driving. 

Miles had suggested the northern route, she remembers. North to Chicago, across from there, and down through California.

“Why did you come this way? Why not go west from Chicago?” 

Janette pales. “Because that would have meant going through Chicago. Nothing could be worse than that.”

Veronica grew up questioning suspects, and interned for the FBI. Her legal training had included every type of interview technique, and she uses every single one of them on Janette. To no avail. The older woman doesn't even seem capable to expressing what had happened there.'

“Part of our group has family in Chicago – that's where we're heading,” Veronica confesses finally, and Janette's head jerks up in alarm before she subsides into her grey funk. When she speaks again, it's a mere hum of thought, so soft that Veronica nearly misses it. 

“If they're still in Chicago, they're not going to be alive,” Janette says, then lifts her head to pin Veronica with determined grey eyes. “And I'd kill myself and the children before I went back.”

*

Miles wakes up, and Veronica waits until he's steady on his feet before kicking them out from under him.

He's sitting down, watching Bass are run the children through some sort of drill – evac, by the look of it - and she waits, a fake smile on her face, as the little ones sing back chapter and verse of their training.

“Shall we ask Miss Veronica what you need to do when we give the signal?” Bass asks his acolytes, and the chorus of “yes” leaves her no room to wiggle.

“Run to the treeline and don't come out till someone you trust says its safe,” she parrots their chorus, and they laugh and applaud and please God don't let them lose this, not on our watch, she prays.

“I need to talk to you both,” she says quietly and then hovers, hoping the urgency is apparent.

Miles barks at the children and they scatter, leaving Veronica trying to figure out what to say. Since the day she woke up, they've been bound for Chicago. Sometimes a few miles, sometimes an entire day. They'd move west to avoid a threat, or east to follow the game, but never south. Every camp one step closer to. Chicago. Family, Miles says, and Bass shrugs.

Her throat goes dry, and the words are hoarse when she finally forces them out.

“Janette and Tony. They started in Chicago.”

Miles takes his eyes off the undergrowth to stare at her. “They told us they'd come from Knoxville! What the hell else did they say?”

“Things are bad, Miles. Really bad up there. Janette said anyone left in Chicago …” Veronica's nerve falters at the sudden tension in his frame. He prowls closer, as if he can scare the words out of her.

“What? Anyone left in Chicago is what?” The words drip pure, cold menace, and terror obliterates her common sense. 

“Has gone somewhere else. If they've survived,” she blurts, every instinct in her demanding she run. Now. This is not the Miles she knows.

Bass slides in between them.

“Hey. Dude. Up here. Look at me.”

Veronica slumps with relief as Miles yanks his eyes from hers. He and Bass are nose to nose, now, silence thick between them as they stare each other down. Bass moves slowly and carefully to rest his hands on the taller man's shoulders, neither pushing him away, or pulling him closer. Anchoring him with touch, she realises slowly.

The phrases float back from the counselling prac she did in her senior year. Bass is drawing his focus, making sure Miles is grounded in the present. Bringing him back. Her 'from what' is automatic, until she remembers the stray references to Afghanistan and Iraq. They're both combat veterans. Of course.

Not that this looks like any sort of therapy she's ever witnessed.

They are closer now, and Bass has released his grip on Miles. His hands are moving, stroking over bony shoulders and wiry biceps and back up to smoothe over a vein throbbing in the long planes of Miles' neck. Miles makes a small noise, something between protest and grateful relief, and Bass just smiles.

It's a conversation, Veronica realises slowly. Whatever Bass is trying to say though, Miles is finally hearing it. Eventually, he turns his head, his eyes focus on her, and he's back. Safe. 

“I'm sorry,” she mumbles. “Not knowing – it's difficult.”

(Dad. Wallace. Mac. Weevil. Logan.)

Miles drags in a breath, then eyes her sheepishly. “Yeah. I just … I'm not ready to give up hope, you know? My brother and his wife – they're smart. Worldclass smart. And they have these two great kids, and then you see some of the shit that's happening to little kids and you just ...”

He shakes his head and collapses a little, folding himself into Bass and huffing into his shoulder. Veronica steps forward too, crucified by the pain on both men's faces.

“Don't. Don't do that to yourselves. You can't know what's out there, but here – you're stopping it. You are stepping up to make it stop, and hopefully, someone else is doing that where your brother is, Miles. But right now … you kinda owe it to yourselves to finish what you've started here,” she says urgently.

Her hand hovers in the air before it comes down on his long back, awkward pats that bely her need to burrow between them and steal some comfort. She resists at first when Bass pulls her in, wrapping his arm around her shoulder and tugging, then gives it up as a useless impulse. It's been so long since she felt needed, and wanted, and here - nestling in under their armpits, squished and uncomfortable, but so very warm - here, she is. 

She could stay with them, she thinks dazedly. She could. Build something, Be a part of the plan. It's not just Miles and Bass and all the intriguing, terrifying possibilities they present, it's more than that. Every jangling, unquiet instinct she has is telling her that these people, this place – it's the start of something important. 

“We're still going to Chicago,” Miles rumbles, and she feels, rather than sees, Bass nod. 

“Maybe in the summer, when the walking will be easier and there will be more food around,” he says. “After we get these people to a town we trust. Somewhere we can fortify. A town,” he mumbles, words vanishing into the press of bodies.

And that's how it starts.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I was hoping to finish up with this chapter, but my smut muse took a step back in service of Veronica's need to sort Bass and Miles out. Huh. That's going to take longer than I originally expected, so at least two more chapters before we finish up. And *cough* I'm travelling with limited Internet access until late July, so the next chapter could be a while.

_Twenty weeks after the blackout_

It was probably a service town for the park, before. Just a handful of houses, most of them empty for most of the year, vacation homes for people who liked trees more than was normal.

“Gatlinburg,” Taylor says, rolling the sound over her tongue in a way that sounds almost bemused by the point of this tiny hamlet. “Guess it was quiet?”

“Three old men and thirty coondogs for sure,” Bass hoots, flashing his grin her way. “Probably still here, wondering why the tel-o-vis stopped working.”

“Looks like someone's gonna have to go door to door and check,” Miles says sourly. Their disdain cuts a little – little place like this would'a been his idea of heaven, back then. Now, it could mean safety, security, their survival, but he resents it anyway.

He's supposed to be going to Chicago, not taking over Hicksville fucking Tennessee to act as some sort of surrogate parent to a bunch of victimised women and children. The one time he'd had a genuine chance to play happy families, he'd walked away, scared, and just 'cause the world had changed, didn't mean he had. He was a fucking soldier, not a nanny. This was a mistake.

Miles looks up to find Bass watching him, eyes cool, mouth ticking down at one corner.

“One road in, one road out. Gorge to the south. Serious fucking mountains to the north and west,” he offers. Soldier to soldier.

Fuck him and his instinct for knowing exactly the right thing to say. He wants the bastard to be wrong, but its undeniable. Gatlinburg is the place.

“Pair up! Check every fucking house in the town. You go in polite, but armed. We're not kicking out anyone still living here, but we are taking over. Come get me if they have a problem with that.”

In the end, it's Bass who talks old Superbowl games with Darby Rutter, and gets a mud map of the wider region from Abby Purfitt's two grown sons. Veronica riffs on about rights and responsibilities with the old man who was a judge, once, and him? He got to shoot three good ol' boys who asked Jeremy if they'd sell 'em his pretty sister.

“Fucking ground rules. Nobody's selling anyone. And nobody's fuckin' anyone who ain't grown,” he bellows as he drops the bodies in front of the local store.

“Arguments?”

Not a one, apparently.

*

Bass and Miles talk vantage points and defensibility and how quick they can get word down the line, then choose the house with the pretty yellow shutters. 

“I said they were cute! I didn't mean I needed to live there!” Veronica protests, and its not 'til the gotcha grin blooms on Bass' face that she realises what she's done. Taylor had invited her to come live in the pretty bungalow deeper into the village, and Ma Baker's girls had practically begged Veronica to move in with them.

The two men hadn't bothered to ask, just chosen the house with three bedrooms and the wraparound porch and the sweet, if saggy face, and assumed she'd come trotting after. She should say no.

She should.

“I need you close, Veronica,” Miles mumbles, and she forces herself to breathe through her nose. Calmly, dammit. (She used to stamp her foot when she got like this, a long time ago. She thought the urge had faded with adulthood. Huh.) 

Two days later, she's still waiting to find out what he needs her for. While Bass has spent the day building bridges – an actual footbridge, it turns out – with the handful of locals he is trying to win over, Miles seems keener to work his way through the formidable stash of booze left by the previous resident. He offers her a glass the minute she wanders in from her long lunch with the town's resident elder, Judge Parfitt, and by the time Bass gets home, he's almost smiling.

Maybe it's the Blackout version of designated driver, Veronica thinks sourly. Last man standing gets to take first watch. Or maybe, she ponders as she watches them through the amber prism of her half-full glass, they just want an inhouse therapist. Half-full, or half-empty, though? Go in hard, or tip-toe through their particular minefield? 

And now she's remembering why she dumped psych after finalising her masters. No patience for bullshit.

“So are we going to talk about your little problem?”

Miles and Bass take near simultaneous swallows of bourbon, their panicked expressions radiating fuck no. Veronica's not sure she needs to be abstemious any more – she rarely sees enough booze to follow her mother down the merry little path into alcoholism - but habit has kept her to a single glass, sipped slowly.

Given they've drunk the remaining three-quarters of the bottle Miles had found, the two men are frighteningly functional. It makes her feel better about violating their privacy with a little sneaky therapy.

“What problem?” Miles tries for outright incomprehension, not that Veronica's buying. Bass, at least, is clever enough to dissemble. “Which problem? Putting stuff down for the winter?”

Veronica rolls her eyes. “I have a degree in psychology, Bass. I know post traumatic stress disorder when I see it,” she says, refusing to be deflected. Non-confrontational, the experts used to recommend. Don't maintain eye contact. Allow the subjects to proceed at their own pace. 

Bass Monroe would have danced rings around them, Veronica suspects. But would that have been before or after they bashed themselves bloody on Miles Matheson's stone wall? The only way to deal with these two hard asses was to go in hard herself.

“Miles has a pretty severe case. And you're not far behind him – you just hide it better,” she says perfunctorily. “Were you both in treatment before the Blackout? On medication?”

The twin looks of scorn on their faces gives her an answer. “What? You just kept it hidden? Pretended you weren't getting flashbacks and night terrors and whatever the fuck else? That sort of stuff – you need to talk to someone,” she snaps.

Miles grunts derisively and dives right back into his bourbon, splashing his umpteenth serving into the chipped tumblers they'd found in the hall cupboard. Bass goes on the attack, banging his glass down onto the table and stalking around to get right in her face.

“It's not like any one else could ever understand,” he hisses. “And we had each other.”

Veronica looks up at him and tilts her head.

“So your plan was what? To fuck each other through it?”

The two men freeze, the shock on their faces making it very clear this is the first time anyone has ever dared suggest such a thing. Bass recovers first, dismissing the entire situation with a seemingly careless shrug of his shoulder. 

“Whatever works,” he says sulkily, and there's a defiance there that perplexes her. It's not until Miles growls in disgust that she realises it's not aimed at her.

They don't talk about this either, she realises with a sinking heart. Don't admit it, even to themselves. Fuck. She didn't sign up to play matchmaker to two closeted soldiers. Specially ones that she –

Veronica yanks her mind away from exploring that thought, and puts it to work figuring out what to do. Their sex life is none of her business. Particularly when they can't seem to admit they have a sex life that doesn't involve a girl between them.

And again with the thoughts she can't be having. Veronica finishes her bourbon in a long swallow and pushes herself to her feet. 

“Look. We will be talking about the PTSD, but … I think you two have something else you need to figure out first. So I'm gonna leave you to it.”

She has barely turned her back before Miles takes a swing at Bass, sending their precious bottle of bourbon crashing to the floor. They'll regret that, Veronica knows. Once they get over their need to pound on each other, they'll have to find more booze before they can actually talk. Reminds her of …

Veronica blinks, blindsided by the thought. Nah. The PCHer and the Prince of the 09 hadn't even been friends. Even if they had been inordinately fond of beating on each other with their fists.

Sublimation, her smug, over-educated brain supplies. Something the two dorks currently throwing chairs at each other inside probably know a lot about. Veronica sighs – boneheads! - and wanders out to the corner of the porch where the hammock hangs. It's not warm enough to sleep out here this time of year, but she's still alcohol-warm, and the sky is mesmerising. Never used to look like this, even in Neptune, she remembers with a pang. 

She remembers lying back on Dog Beach with Weevil, competing to create the most ridiculous names for the constellations neither of them knew anything about. They'd laughed until it had been time to cry that night, her soul aching from what she'd done to her Dad, and what Logan had done to Piz, and what she had done to Logan. And when he turned to her, body warm alongside hers and heart in his eyes, she'd nearly taken the comfort her friend had quite clearly been offering. 

Then she remembered what Dick had said.

“Rich dude kryptonite,” he'd called her. And she'd liked it, really, knowing she had some sort of power over the people who stomped all over everyone else. But this guy, the one with everything to lose? He couldn't afford her.

And how'd martydom work out for you anyway, she taunts her younger self. How many nights had she stared up at the sky since, regretting her decision? How many dreams full of the sweep of his eyelashes and the pictures on his body?

Regret is fo' suckaz, she remembers some girl on a tv show saying. Wonder where you are now, sweetheart? Where did tv actresses ride out the apocalypse?

Probably not trying to navigate her way through the twin minefields of PTSD and sexual repression, that's for sure. That's all you, Veronica Mars, she sighs, and forces her wobbly legs out of the hammock and into the house to see if they're done wrecking the place yet.

Maybe, maybe not.

Miles has Bass spreadeagled against the refrigerator, his chest pushing into the other man's back as throws his weight into subduing the smaller man. Not that Bass is fighting him – his head has dropped forward, almost despairing, and his voice is quiet when he speaks.

“Don't do this, man. So fucking sick of it.”

“What? What are talking about dickhead?”

“This. You roughing me up, pushing me around – just 'cause you're hard, and you want it to be hard,” Bass says bitterly.

“If you wanna fuck me, fine, fuck me, but don't pretend we're still beating on each other. Don't pretend this isn't something we do, just because you're worried what people will think. Do it, or don't do it, but … stop lying to yourself, brother.”

Veronica swallows hard, and swipes at eyes. She's not sure who she is crying for – poor, emotionally raw Bass, who loves so fiercely, or Miles, so shut off he risks losing everything. A couple of things are clearer, though.

She needs to keep an eye on Bass. Three months, and she'd never realised how close he was to breaking. And she's going to kick Miles Matheson's ass the first chance she gets.


	7. Chapter 7

_Twenty six weeks after the Blackout_

A few days before Thanksgiving, the chill in the air starts to bite, and they light the fire for the first time. She and Bass are both cats, never warm enough, so they cuddle next to the hearth while Miles stays in the kitchen, alone. Scowling, no doubt.

“Hey tiger. You need to ease up,” Bass says, then backs away from her glare, hands raised in surrender. “I'm just saying. Things are fucking frosty round here of late. Whatever he's done, he's sorry, Veronica. I can tell.”

It bemuses her that Bass is oblivious to why she hasn't smiled at Miles in a fortnight, and refuses to drink with him, or even sit on his side of the room. 

“He needs to get his head out of his ass, Bass. 'Bout of a lot of things,” Veronica starts. “There are 40 people in this town right now, and he doesn't even know all of their names. I do. You do. But it was Miles who decided we'd just waltz in here and take over, Miles who needs the fucking wall built, Miles who yells at the kids if they dare tremble when he puts them down in the exercise yard. He's a fucking dictator – all power, no responsibility,” she fumes. “If he wants to do this, he needs to step up. Less tinpot dictator, more leader with actual leading,” she snarls, then drops her head to her knees as the angry tightness in her chest solidifies into a hard knot.

“Feel better?” Bass asks, rubbing her back, and she does, she does, but ...

“That how you really feel?”

Veronica burrows her head further into her knees so she doesn't have to look at the long, dark streak of misery lurking in the doorway. Miles sounds as if he's been drinking acid rather than whiskey (or is it bourbon or rum? She swore off the stuff half a dozen bottles ago) and that has to be what's responsible for the hurt in his voice. Not like it could be real human feelings. 

“Go crawl back into your bottle, Matheson,” she mumbles, and Bass' annoyed intake of breath reminds her he'd just asked her to go easy. To lift her embargo on all things Miles. Well, she wasn't a fucking charity. She'd need a concession or two first.

Veronica lifts her head to glare at Miles, only to find he's not really looking at her. His eyes are on Bass – the arm still looped around her shoulders, fingers tugging at her hair. His profile, a work of art in the firelight, curls backlit like one of Michelangelo's darlings. 

Miles looks undone. Regret, and pain, and yearning – she sees them all, yet he stays there, refusing to step forward into the warmth. Instead, he turns his back on them and stomps straight down to the cellar for a new bottle.

The knot tightens again, frustration crystallising into cold, hard resolve. She's knows this dance. She's done it before, and with sneakier drunks than Miles Matheson.

He passes out at the table, that night, and by the time he wades his way back to consciousness the next day, she has collected every last bottle of alcohol in the house. Two she stashes under the floorboards in her room, the rest she buries in the yard. 

Bye bye emotional anaesthesia, she snorts as she adds another shovelful of dirt to the hole. The two men would just have to learn how to deal with their problems sober. The freshly dug mound offers the perfect home for the spring bulbs she'd found mouldering in the basement, and she finds herself humming as she plants them out. Maybe if Miles has pulled his head out of his ass by the summer, she'll ask him to turn this into a vegetable patch. Just the thought of the look on his face when he finds his precious booze … 

Her happy smirk fades as she remembers her plan. Just for the winter. Just until we can get through the Plains without freezing to death.

By summer, she'll probably be back in Neptune, she promises herself. Even as the lie sits rancid in her mouth, she daydreams about planting a garden with her Dad, or fighting with a very different pair of hard-headed idiots. The thought makes her smile again, but still doesn't manage to dislodge the lump in her throat. And now she's digging blindly, trying to plant through the sheen of tears.

She has to stop, and breathe, and she can almost see that sidelong look Weevil would give her when she did this. “Stop hiding from the truth,” he'd groan, and she'd be able to, at least for a while.

“Stop. Hiding.” she forces through gritted teeth, and stops to wipe away the tears trickling down her face. Not something you should do with dirty hands, she realises a moment too late, but the grit on her face is strangely liberating. 

Face it, Veronica, she sighs as she tenderly pats the soil around her newly-planted bulbs. You want to stay. This place. Whatever it is we're building here. Them. (Oh God. Them.) 

And that's one too many truths right there, Veronica tells herself as she pushes herself to her feet in rush. Like she's ever going to figure out whatever the hell is happening with Matheson and Monroe. But one thing she does know.

If she has to leave, she's damn well going to sort them out before she goes. Tendency to hide behind alcohol? Done. Now where's the easy fix for pathological codependence?

Veronica rolls her eyes at just how much of a cliché the answer is. Men and their fucking egos.

She asks Bass to teach the Partridge brothers some woodcraft, because God and the venison can hear them coming, and their stores desperately need boosting for the winter. Johnson and his boys tag along, and two, three trips later, Bass is masterminding a virtual game drive that pulls in half the town. 

It's not just the full belly factor, Veronica muses as she watches Bass weave through his admirers. He flashes his smile left and right, accepting a backslap here and a fervent handshake there, spinning plans and moving mountains as he basks in the lashings of admiration. He's kinder, too, and more generous than she realised he could be, as if the town has decided he's their Messiah, and he's been forced to step up.

Miles, meanwhile, glares from the sidelines.

Go ahead and stew, Veronica thinks uncharitably. Somewhere along the way, Bass had put his best friend at the centre of his personal universe, but Miles Matheson was no life-giving star. He was as heedless and dense as any black hole, but the pull of him, that irresistible gravity … Veronica groans at her own metaphor, but can't help feel the truth of it, deep in her belly. (Bass isn't the only person at risk of being sucked in). 

One week, two, and she gives up on the idea that things would be easier once the cloud of alcohol had lifted. Sobriety only makes him meaner, all lacerating quips and a fuse so short that people flinch whenever he so much glances their way. Bass navigates his foul moods with the ease of long practise, but Veronica's on the verge of digging up the bottles again, just to shut him up.

Instead she rolls her eyes at his busy-work patrols, and passes on every tidbit of gossip about just how enamoured of Bass the entire town is. (Women and men, Miles. So grateful.) She tries not to laugh in his face when it twists with jealousy, or poke too hard when he watches Bass working side-by-side with someone else, chatting and laughing as if they'd known each other forever. It's his own fault if he can't see it, she tells herself. Whatever else is happening in town, whoever else is around - it's still Miles that Bass looks for first. Still Miles that his eyes follow, or whose mood determines whether Bass will start the day whistling or snappish.

Still Miles who pretends to be oblivious.

Veronica grits her teeth and tells herself the plan is to get them functional. She wasn't their fairy godmother – if happily ever after was on the cards, they could damn well figure it out for themselves. She'd settle for basic communication and a modicum of human decency – something Miles seems to be dragging his heels about.

So _fuck_ waiting.

She's not sure it's her best plan ever – they had been pretty drunk that night – but Bass had been insistent, almost falling over himself to convince her. “He's a philosopher. A fucking philosopher!” he'd burbled, and Miles had blushed when he looked away, so she's gonna take that as evidence and hope for the best. 

She kicks his boots off the kitchen table, and plonks the heavy pile of law books down in front of him.

“Judge Purfitt's,” she responds when he shoots her a filthy look. “Try not to get mud on them,” she says curtly, and leaves him to read. A few days later she marches him up the hill to Purfitt, to talk jurisprudence and governance and the old man's favourite, “rights and responsibilities, boy, can't have rights without responsibilities.” 

Bass, as so often happens, turns out to be right. She's almost annoyed when Miles doesn't completely hate it – he has a surprisingly incisive mind that attacks Socrates, Locke and Rawls alike with simple flow chart logic.

“No! If we throw out the concepts of right and wrong and just look at fucking circumstances – where will we be, Miles? What sort of society is that?” Veronica snaps one night. She'd actually been silly enough to consider it progress when the two men made it back to the dinner table after weeks of ignoring each other, but without whiskey to dull their edges, the arguments flare quick and caustic.

And to think she thought philosophy would be safe.

“You start with your worst case scenario, and work back from there,” he shrugs. “Factor A plus Factor B leads to outcome C. Easy.”

“You've just discarded the Golden Rule in favour of _logistics_ , Miles? Really?”

Bass, she realises, is shaking and spluttering, apparently having inhaled some of his mash while trying not to laugh at them. 

“It's what he does,” he hiccups when he finally stops coughing. “Couldn't pass fucking eleventh grade English because he wouldn't write more than a few sentences about the stuff we had to read. And then the teacher got pissed because he'd pin that shit down in three or four sentences when she'd asked for two pages..”

“Bet you had fun with Pope,” Veronica smiles tightly, the memory punching her hard. “Life's a bitch until you die.”

Miles seems to consider this for a second, then pulls a wry face in agreement.

“Yeah. My bitch,” Bass crows, saluting them with his water glass then tossing it back as if it was a shot of the Highland's finest.

Miles' mouth twitches, and then he starts to curl in on himself. Stomach cramps, Veronica wonders for a minute, then he starts to shake, spluttering with laughter. 

Veronica rolls her eyes at the giggling idiots and tries to pretend she's not horribly, ridiculously, tearfully thankful to have these crazy, fucked-up men in her life. 

*

Things thaw a little, after that. They still fight – _God_ do they fight – but they're a unit now, and mostly manage to act like it. Bass spends most of his time beaming at the world, and people don't try to cross the street to avoid Miles anymore. 

And she hears them at night. 

The verbal jabs don't stop, but they're more likely to end in the relentless creak of bedsprings than in fists on flesh. The moans and mutters and hoarse cries in the middle of the night are pure pleasure. And it's not Miles making those noises – it's Bass, full of breathless satisfaction. Pleasured beyond reason. Begging his lover to let him come.

Miles had obviously resolved at least one part of his identity crisis, even if he's still playing the selfish loner bastard in public. Even if he still freezes like a rabbit in the headlights when Bass trails an unthinking hand down his back as they sit in front of the fire one night, and Veronica has to bite down on her tongue, because, Jesus. Closeted much?

Bass rolls his eyes and tries not to look like a kicked puppy, but Veronica's just done.

“You do realise that I sleep across the hall from you? And that Bass is so fucking noisy I don't get any sleep until you two do?” she says sharply. “C'mon, Miles. You get to fuck the prettiest man in town. At least pretend for the sake of us poor celibates that you're enjoying it.”

Bass looks as if he's fighting off the urge to laugh, but Miles stares down at his boots, his expression haunted.

The words, when they come, are so halting and unsure, she'd swear it was a child speaking. 

“My Dad. Used to call Ben a little faggot. Because he was into books and shit. But it was always little faggot this, little faggot that … so one day, I asked him what a faggot was.”

“Men who liked to fuck other men, he told me. Perverts. Didn't say anything about how you can feel more ...” Miles broke off, obviously unable to finish the sentence, but Veronica wasn't in the mood for mercy.

“Feel what?”

“Feel … more for your friend than your girlfriends. Need him more. No matter who else is in your life.”

“As a friend?”

Miles head rears back as if she's slapped him. “Who says friendship isn't stronger than everything else anyway? The people you choose are the people you choose, Veronica. Loyalty, brotherhood – never had that with anyone else. No law that says you can't call someone a friend just because you want to fuck them raw.”

Bass coughs, caught somewhere between shock and amusement. “Um – there was actually. Don't ask, don't tell, remember?”

“Maybe I took that a bit too fucking seriously, okay?” Miles growls, scrubbing at his hair with one huge hand. Veronica blinks at the admission, and tries to pull herself upright, suddenly wanting to leave them to their moment. Bass clamps his hand down on her shoulder, refusing to allow it, even as he turns to Miles, voice urgent.

“I knew. I was there, remember? Your Dad was shit and your mom was gone and even with Emma, this stuff was hard for you. But I always knew, even before things got … physical,” Bass pleads.

“Miles, I just need you around. To know you've got my back. Family,” he stresses, voice breaking on the final word.

“Always, brother. Family,” Miles repeats, and drops down beside him. They reach for her almost as one person, and Veronica has to bury her face in Bass' neck to hide the sobs that are threatening to claim her. It's Miles, though, who soothes her through it, big hand moving over her head, smoothing down her hair, rough voice rasping apologies into her ear.

She wakes between them in the morning, a tangle of hands and legs and warm, sluggish bodies unwilling to leave each other. Bass is smiling even before his eyes open, and Veronica's breath stutters when he pulls her flush against him, lips burrowing into the back of her neck, and one hand idly tracing the contours of thigh and hip and the curve of her waist.

Veronica bites her lip and tries to steady her breathing, but then looks up to find Miles watching her. The heat in his eyes makes her heart slam against her ribcage as if desperate to escape, and he actually smiles as he brings his mouth closer to her ear.

“Such a good friend, Veronica,” he croons, and she knows exactly what he's saying.

Exactly what they want.

(Everything she's sick and tired of denying herself.)


	8. Chapter 8

_Her body is thrumming with hot press of the bodies either side of her, three sets of sandy feet propped up on the coffee table, three sets of eyes glued to the screen as the boys wage war. They'd found her at the beach, barely giving her the time to pull a pair of cutoffs over her bikini before dragging her back to the Grand to talk “strategy”. She's not sure how that requires endless rounds of Mortal Kombat, but the ceasefire holds as long as they're hammering at their consoles, trading insults and talking smack, Veronica the Berlin Wall between them._

_But this wall really needs to eat, specially if she's gonna kick some Outworlder ass, and thank goodness for well-stocked mini bars. And maybe she digs her fingernails into Logan's thigh as she pushes herself up, and maybe her hand takes a long, slow journey up over the landscape of Weevil's arm and shoulder, but fuck it, she's 18 and alone with the only two boys she knows who aren't scared of her. They'd shared their intel and sorted out their plan of attack and sealed it with a shot of tequila and now – now she wants to play._

_So she can sit her ass back down on the couch and pretend she actually wants to kill things, or she can take things up a notch. They'll let her, she knows. They'll fall over themselves to touch her, and maybe even each other, because they're Logan and Weevil and no one in the room is oblivious to the sexual tension that quivers between them._

_Veronica bites her lip and glances back towards the two boys on the couch, gathering her courage. She's already moving towards them when someone catches her hand, weaving their fingers together and giggling into her ear. Lilly._

_“Veronica Mars! Get down with your red satin self,” her best friend purrs. “You sure you're ready, though? These two, they'll break your heart. You know that, right?”_

_She wants to tell Lilly they wouldn't, they'd never, but the words won't come, and she can't find her anyway, the room starting to whirl as she searches and searches. Logan and Weevil are calling her from the couch, but it suddenly seems so far away, and the floor is sucking her down, soft carpet turned to wet, sucking clay ..._

Veronica jerks awake with Lilly's voice still echoing in her head, and her pulse slamming against her temple. She lies still for a second – a dream, just a dream – then lets out a long, shaky breath. She's just a little fuzzy and wrung out, she tells herself. The tequila, maybe, but she bets the boys feel worse. Hangover city, probably, she smiles and reaches for her phone to check the time.

No phone. No couch, she realises slowly, and no television, not any more. She's on the floor in front of a fireplace, carefully tucked into a cocoon of blankets, all alone.

No Logan. No Weevil. No Lilly, living or dead. They've started to call it the Blackout, Veronica remembers slowly. Everything gone in a moment, and nothing but death and chaos since.

Then, Bass and Miles, and a different type of madness.

Her memory of the night before comes stampeding back then. Waking in the night to find Miles gazing down on her, and the way her body had throbbed when his tongue flicked out to ghost across her ear. The tiniest of touches, and she had been liquefied. And Bass – Bass had known it, his mouth catching her tortured exhale, his lips moving down the column of her throat.

“Veronica,” he had rasped. “Tell us you want this. Please.”

Her body was already writing cheques her mind wasn't sure she wanted to cash, her spine arching up to push her into Bass' mouth, her hands clutching at Miles as if he could stop the world spinning. 

“God yes,” she had moaned, and that had been the point things got a little blurry. The scratch of Miles' stubble across her cheek as he shouldered Bass out of the way to get at her mouth; the sudden kiss of cold air on her belly as her shirts seemed to slip away. Teeth tugging aside the lace of her bra and the hot slide of a wet tongue over her nipple. Long fingers, sliding down the front of her jeans, sliding straight inside of her, obliteration beckoning.

Sanity intruding.

“Wait. Wait!” Veronica was still bucking her hips even as her good sense started to object. Bass had lifted his head first, blue eyes shuttered and face tight, but when he finally met her panicked gaze, his expression shifted to concern. 

“Sorry,” he had muttered, kissing her forehead before rolling away to stare at the ceiling, obviously grappling for composure. 

Miles' eyebrows had almost hit his hairline in an incredulous arch, his thumb flicking her clit as if to question whether she was serious. “As in, stop?”

Lilly's echo is fresh in her mind now – _you sure you're ready?_ – but the night before, it hadn't been nearly as clear. Just a vague feeling of something not quite right, something unfinished. She'd ignored it for several long moments, grabbing at the pleasure he was offering before managing to push it away. “Yeah. Stop. Please.”

She didn't owe them an explanation, she told herself fiercely, but the silence between them had been too fraught to bear.

“I want this. But – not tonight. I have things I need to do first,” she told them, and maybe they thought she meant shave her legs or freshen up her ladyparts, because they'd just shrugged and pulled her back into them to claim a few more hours of sleep. 

No wonder she'd gone spinning into dreamland, Veronica shivers. She hadn't been ready, but it wasn't about them breaking her heart, or outraging her virtue. Did Lilly somehow exist on a plane where she could understand what was going on down here? Or was she purely the voice of Veronica's unconscious, voicing the concerns her lust-clouded brain would rather overlook?

Like the people she needed to see today, and the plans she needed to make. She frets for a moment – is it a contingency plan or an escape hatch? - then forces herself past it, because it just doesn't matter. The outcome will still be the same. 

(She gets what she wants. And then she leaves a little bit of her heart behind.) 

*

Taylor is working through her drills in the front yard of the house she shares with Janette, Tony and the kids, her strikes fast and deadly as she kicks, punches and chops at the bag suspended from the old tree. Luz watches her every move, forehead wrinkled with concentration, and when Taylor sets her up in front the bag, manages to replicate many of them.

They exchange high fives, and something fierce and uncompromising inside Veronica sings to see it. They can do it, she knows then. She and Taylor, Luz and Javier and the kids that'll grow up in the black – they can protect themselves. If they don't know how, they'll learn soon enough.

She leaves Taylor and the kids to their lesson and moves inside to find Janette and Tony finishing up their breakfast. She drinks her coffee slowly, and waits for the idle conversation to peter out before asking the question.

“Are you still looking to take the kids home?” she asks, and when Janette nods, takes a deep breath.

“I'll come with you. On the condition we leave within the week. Hit the Plains for the beginning of Spring. More to eat, easier travelling than in summer.”

Veronica keeps her posture open, but her smile tight. It's true, after all. The layer of reason on top of the huge, emotional iceberg. She needs to go. Soon. Every day she spends with Miles and Bass is another day closer to never leaving, and now, now that she's had a taste of how things could be ...

Her time is up.

She leaves them talking horses versus a wagon, and the need to start getting in supplies. She murmurs her assent, but her mind is already moving on to her next call. 

Judge Purfitt's house is high on the hill, across the valley from the town, and from his porch she can see the little yellow house she's been sharing with Miles and Bass. Veronica's stomach rumbles, and she wonders if they're sitting down to eat yet. Or perhaps indulging other appetites, the sort of things her presence might have curtailed last night.

Her heart bangs frantically at the thought, and she has to rip her imagination away and force herself to focus on her task at hand. He's lonely, though, and very vocal. It'll probably take most of the afternoon, she soothes her flipflopping stomach. Plenty of time for her to find her courage, she admits as she pounds loudly on the wood next to the screen door. 

“Judge Purfitt? Can I come in?”

He shuffles out slowly, eyes red and jowls puffy, and she holds her breath for a moment, panicking. If she's not going to be around, they need this man. 

“Veronica! To what do I owe this distinct pleasure, my dear?”

He brightens the minute he sees her, and her fears ebb a little. He'd not had real conversation in more than five years, not since he'd retired up here, Purfitt had admitted the last time they'd had tea. Sure, he could talk bear scat and whether the buzzards were flying backwards and how it was all the Blackout's fault, but not too many callers wanted to discuss the role of jurisprudence in civilisation, or what the hell they were going to do now it was gone. 

“Uh – just a few of the things we were talking about last time I was here. Rule of law versus birthrite, you remember?”

“Of course I do. You insist on holding on to some of those high-falutin' academic concepts, but 20 years on the bench lends a different perspective, child. You see the same things often enough, idealism becomes something you can't afford.”

“So – the strong dominating the weak. You think it's inevitable, and inevitably destructive.”

“Yup. Unless, like I said, someone steps up. Call 'im a dictator, or a tyrant or what you will, but a strong man – or woman – willing to make the hard decisions … that's God's work. Because he made some of us strong, and some weak, and some smart and most of 'em dumb, and the people who can, well hell. They damn well should!”

Veronica rolls her eyes at all the God stuff, but the rest of it has her pulse hammering in tredipation. She's watched them navigate the shoals of despond so very badly, this terrifies her. Because it can't stop here. It won't. Miles and Bass – they had a responsibility. And if she knows anything about her soldiers, it's that they'll try to fight it, but they won't turn away. Cowards they're not.

“I need to ask a favour.”

“You want me to look out for those boys of yours, don't you.”

She blinks, astonished.

“How did you – nevermind. Bygones. Yes. They'll need someone to – keep 'em on the straight and narrow. They can be a little too 'faster pussycat, kill, kill.'”

He blinks in surprise, then rolls into a belly laugh. “No idea what you mean, but I know exactly what you meant. And you have to keep you safe while you get on with whatever you're going out there to do.”

“It was a movie, a really old one. Used to watch it with my Dad,” Veronica explains, trying to swallow the lump in her throat. “I don't know if he's okay,” she says, and shrugs, as if that's explanation enough.

And maybe Purfitt had a daughter once, who loved him best of all the people in the world, because he pulls her into a hug and kisses the top of the head. “Wherever he is, he's proud of you, girl. I'll keep those knuckleheads in line, you go out there and find him.”

“I will,” Veronica says, and she's not sure if the stubborn determination in her voice is for his benefit, or her own.

*

She returns to the house with the yellow shutters just on dusk, dropping the fruits of her ramble on the kitchen table before following the scent of pine smoke into the living room. Bass and Miles are stretched out on the rug, shoulders rubbing together as they talk softly, hands everywhere. Tears sting her eyes once more, but at least these are grateful tears. Mostly.

“Veronica!” Bass greets, shoving closer to Miles in a bid to make room for her. She sinks down next to him, and shoots Miles a cautious smile.

“Hey.”

“Hey.”

Bass rolls his eyes. “Such fucking eloquence. Anyone would think we weren't friends,” he grins, teeth sharp. Veronica blushes, and Miles looks away, and yep, they're definitely all thinking the same thing.

“Got a present for you,” she blurts, then runs upstairs to unearth the half-bottle of whiskey from under her floorboards. There's functional, she tells herself, and then there's excruciatingly sober. Tonight she might need to tiptoe the path between.

Bass grins wolfishly as she returns to the fireside with three glasses, and Miles just raises an eyebrow.

“Well, lookee there. Someone knew where all the whiskey went,” he snarks, and Veronica gives him a moment of shocked, wide-eyed innocence before discarding it completely.

“Someone is going to miss out completely if they insist on being a dick,” she responds saccharine sweet as she sets the glasses out side-by-side on the hearth. She hands the bottle to Bass and asks him to pour. 

He stops with the bottle poised over the third glass, shooting a wicked glance back over his shoulder. “Dick or no dick, Miles?” he purrs, then slowly licks his lips.

Veronica claps a hand over her mouth, but when Miles' usually surly face bugs into an I-can't-believe-you-said-that grin, her jangled nerves explode into irresistible laughter. She giggles and snorts and shakes until she can't breathe, and just as she thinks she's getting herself under control again, another wave of hilarity breaks. Veronica's ribs are aching by the time she is finally able to stop, but the silence that blankets the room is blissfully comfortable.

They relax into each other, a tumble of intertwined limbs on the rug in front of the fire, sipping slowly to mark the occasion. This, she tells herself. This is what she'll miss most, this warm nest of companionship.

And then Miles leans over to suck the whiskey from Bass' tongue in a kiss so prolonged and hungry that it leaves Veronica gaping. Miles is desperately smug afterwards, and he doesn't look away this time, drilling holes in them with those dark, dark eyes, his smile blooming slow and salacious.

“Who said I can't have both?”

And that, Veronica figures, has to be her cue. Because if she doesn't speak up soon, they're going to be naked, and she can't skip blindly into this without telling them first. Informed consent and all that.

“Uh. Yeah. Guys -” the emotion rises up to choke her, and she puts a hand into each of theirs. “I'm leaving with Tony and Janette on Friday.”

Bass interlaces his fingers with hers and squeezes. “Thought you might. To hit the Plains for Spring - I figured they'd want to get moving soon.”

Miles isn't so accepting.

“Tony and Janette? How the hell are they supposed to keep you safe? You need someone who can kick ass if you're going into the plains, and Tony and Janette are good people, but ...”

“Earth to Miles. I'll be the one doing the asskicking. You know that. Taylor's going to come too. And six of us together is a damn sight safer than me going alone.” Veronica tilts her head, daring him to come up with a factor she hasn't considered.

Miles almost froths in frustration.

“Don't be a fuckwit, Miles. She's always said she was going to go, and I've been thinking for a while we were on borrowed time. She has family out there,” Bass says sadly.

Miles isn't taking it well. He's positively glacial as he picks up her glass and tosses back her shot of whiskey.

“You won't be wanting that, then. Gotta get used to rotgut and water again. And you'll be wanting to sleep upstairs tonight, I guess. Make the most of your last week in a real bed.” 

Veronica rises to her feet, stung, but Bass pulls her back down with a single yank at her arm. “Ignore the idiot. Stay. Drink. He's just – bad at goodbyes,” he glares at Miles, punctuating it with a kick to his shin. 

“This isn't goodbye,” Veronica says stubbornly. “That's four days away. Tonight is ...”

“Doing that thing you weren't brave enough to do before you planned on leaving? Sounds like goodbye to me, Veronica,” Miles grimaces, and doesn't even bother with his glass this time, taking a swig straight from the bottle.

Bass shakes his head, but something like agreement flashes over his face. He's hurt. They both are, she realises miserably, and maybe it's the guilt that makes her honest.

“I wouldn't have left, otherwise,” she says softly. “I would have kept finding excuses, reasons to stay, and just … never left. This way …” she shrugs, and tries to let that say the words for her.

(This way, I can't back out. This way, I get you both, but I don't try to fool myself into believing I get to keep you.)

“This way, what?” 

“I'm doing what I need to do,” she snaps, suddenly tired of the weight of it. “And if you two are agreeable, what I think we all want to.”

Veronica blinks with surprise when it's Bass, rather than Miles, who calls her on it.

“And just so we're all on the same page, what is that? Exactly?”

She can feel the blush rising but wills it away. She had been the one to read them the riot act about making sure everyone knew the score before sex entered the equation. And … no one said she couldn't have some fun with it. (So maybe she _is_ still that girl, the one who liked to push things into overdrive.)

“I want to close my eyes and see if I can figure out just whose tongue is inside of me. I want to watch you and Miles together and see if it's as hot as I think it is. I want to sit on your face while Miles is on your cock and see who you can make come first,” she says, dropping every word into the inferno between them.

Miles frowns, and she flicks her eyes over him like a lash. “Problem with that?”

Lust and inhibition battle it out in those bitter chocolate eyes so transparently that she gets to witness his sudden, awed acceptance. He hides it well, though, wry as only Miles Matheson can be.

“Uh, not so much.”

Bass gives a shocked little shudder beside her, and Veronica twines a comforting hand in his curls as she slides into his lap. Miles looms over them both, and she stares up into his face as she fires her final salvo.

“Good. Because I want you to crush me between you and feel you both inside of me and taste you all over me,” she enunciates carefully. “Full disclosure? I want to try every freaky, dirty thing I've ever heard of, and I'm pretty damn sure you two have a few tricks I don't even know about yet because something tells me you have done it _all_ ,” she says, voice husky with anticipation.

Bass breathes an impassioned string of curses into her hair, lips already sliding down the side of her neck as his hands work the button on her jeans. Miles is slower to react, barely breathing as he stares at her, considering. Then he lunges.

He steals her breath with the ferocity of his kiss, lips and tongue and teeth working together to banish any chance at second thoughts. She'd tell him to slow down, except that her hands are tearing at his zipper, yanking heedlessly in a bid to get him naked. Her eyes fly open when she hears the unmistakable rip of torn fabric. Bass has given up on patience, pulling her blouse open with his free hand while the other plunges inside her panties.

“Miles!” he barks, somewhere between a plea and a order. The laconic bastard laughs, but bends his head to obey anyway. Bass grunts with satisfaction as Veronica arches into Miles' mouth, her shocked little noises prodding him towards even greater feats of lets-drive-Veronica-out-of-her-mind. She starts to babble when he seizes a nipple between his lips and sucks it to full hardness before catching it between his teeth to pull. Veronica frays right to the point of pain before he releases her to flop back onto Bass' chest, overcome with sensation. Miles follows her down to soothe her with slow, wet licks, before moving to the other side, and repeating the pattern – vicious and tender. Vicious and tender. 

“Come on, Veronica,” Bass whispers in her ear, and she blinks in shock to realise she's already poised on the edge of an orgasm, her mind finally processing the fact that Bass has been matching Miles' efforts, fucking her gently with his fingers, then pinching hard at her clit. She's not even out of her jeans yet, she thinks dazedly, and … Jesus. _Fuck_. 

(They're gonna have to take them off her, because after that? There's no way she can manage it herself.)


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So that E rating? I really, really mean it now. Explicit depictions of m/m and f/m/m sexual activity ahead.

_Twenty-eight weeks after the Blackout_

Bass props himself up on one arm to watch Veronica surface, smiling at the way her eyelids flutter for a moment before they slowly unveil blue-green eyes still lazy with bliss. Then they snap into focus on his face, and her languor vanishes. He can see the panic brewing for a long moment before she decides what's done is done, and shoots him a sheepish, embarrassed smile.

He puzzles over that for a moment, then the penny drops. She of the unflappable cool had practically disintegrated under their hands, sobbing and crying as they shoved her over the edge. Dirty talk? No problem. Kinky shit? Sure! But losing it completely, in front of an audience? Too fucking intimate.

He offers her a tiny smile and opens his arms to allow her to burrow into him if she wants to. It's just the two of them right now, back in front of the fire they'd made their own, no sign of Miles. He'd headed upstairs “for supplies” long minutes ago, and Bass isn't about to call out, not when Veronica's feeling vulnerable. 

She sighs and nestles into him, and as he strokes her hair, he wonders what it is about control freaks that grabs him so hard. Watching her let go of her hard-ass exterior ranked right up there on his list of religious experiences: Johnny Cook's Batman birthday cake in the third grade, holding his newborn baby sister when he was 13, kissing Miles for the first time just a few years later. Making Veronica Mars lose it, he adds with a hidden smile, and vows to make it happen again.

If he doesn't lose first. She's already fried his brain with that list of demands, things he wants so badly he can only remember the huskiness of her voice and the way his cock had quivered with every word, _taste you all over me_ and _sit on your face_ and _Miles on your cock_. It rises once more just at the memory of how Miles had licked his lips when he heard that, eyes shifting to black as the words sunk in. It might never happen, but Miles had thought about it, and that's more than he and his fucking demons had ever given Bass before.

So sue him for feeling really fucking grateful, Bass thinks, pulling Veronica closer. “I like your plan,” he whispers into her ear, glorying in the way her face shifts from embarrassment to pure sexual mischief. It had slammed straight into whatever part of his brain controlled his runaway libido, and the evil genius damn well knew it. 

“Thought you might,” she breathes, and turns to face him, bold fingers skating over the front of his jeans, rubbing mercilessly over his straining cock. “You know he does too, right?”

Bass blinks with surprise and lets his mind tiptoe in that direction. It's not that he isn't an ecstatically happy bottom – he really, really is – but he'd be lying if he said he hadn't spent a thousand nights jerking off to the thought of Miles around him. Miles moaning underneath him. Miles the one being fucked into the bed for once. And maybe it stings a little to see her casually demanding the one thing he's never dared to ask. But if there's something he knows about Miles Matheson, it's that he doesn't do anything he doesn't want to. Even for a woman like Veronica.

So maybe she's right. Maybe Miles just needed a little push past his fucked up childhood and all the manly man stuff his father had beaten into him. Not that he's the only one coming at this thing damaged, Bass acknowledges. He needs to stop being so fucking grateful for any crumb Miles throws his way. Learn to actually ask for what he wants. He shifts uneasily, sure her habit of unearthing ugly little truths will kill his hard-on, but then she drops a kiss over his heart and sits up to drag a bare nipple over the seam of his lips. Goodbye self-analysis, hello erection, he thinks gleefully, and throws himself into the moment. 

He captures the pouting bud carefully, remembering how rough Miles had been with her, and wincing when he finds a perfect set of teethmarks on the margin of one deliciously rosy nipple. He soothes the bite with the flat of his tongue, then curls it around the nipple as if bathing it in love. Veronica lets out a breathy little sigh that rockets straight to his balls, and it's inconceivable, suddenly, that he hasn't been inside of her yet. 

Miles chooses that moment to return, but Bass can barely spare him a glance, so intent is he on getting her out of her jeans, dragging off denim and underwear and even her socks in one long pull that leaves her nude. He's got his head between her thighs, tongue chasing the sweetness of her earlier release, before Miles manages to fold himself down onto the floor with them.

Veronica's rapidly escalating cries leave Miles grinning. “May as well give it up,” he teases, wrapping himself around her so that he can watch them both. “Bass can eat pussy for days. You can come now, or come so hard later it will hurt,” Miles taunts, tongue working down the side of her neck to find her racing pulse. “Jesus, Bass,” he groans in approval. “She's gotta be close.”

Their eyes meet over Veronica's body. Bass wants to drown in the taste of her, but the need to see Miles lose it has been gnawing at him, relentless. “Pull her up on top of you. Fuck her from underneath,” he orders, voice hoarse with lust.

Veronica is already scrabbling at Miles' belt, so Bass tackles his boots, then yanks the trousers down over those snake hips. It's the tilt of one saucy eyebrow that reminds him he's still wearing his own, and he can feel himself blushing as he unzips carefully, not daring to even touch his tortured cock. 

The moment they are all completely nude strikes him as a revelation, so much skin laid bare, acres and acres of pure eroticism. Bass watches Miles turn clumsy, hands all over her as if trying to memorise the texture of her skin, the sweet handfuls of deliciously soft breasts and sharp little hips. He'd laugh at the frantic look in his friend's eyes if his own cock wasn't leaking, shiny and wet with his need to come, every muscle tense with the strain of _not yet, not yet, not yet_. 

This woman, though. She's evil, he decides, catching the edge of her smile as she sits up on her knees to slide her tongue over his tip, mmm-mming at the flavours she finds there. The maddening wet lick meanders all over his cockhead, before sliding up the pulsing vein underneath. Then she pounces, fingers digging into his ass she starts to suck. He'd wanted, he'd wanted … but he's been wanting too long, and his hips snap helplessly into a fast, brutal rhythm that makes it impossible to warn her, or pull away, or do anything other than fuck her mouth. His balls are already pulling up when he shoots Miles a panicked glance, and _jesusthankyougod_ for years of silent communication because Veronica is suddenly yanked backwards onto Miles' chest. He follows her down, the three of them tumbling into a haphazard pile on the floor, his cock anointing them all as a wrenching orgasm robs him of any sort of control.

He tries to keep his eyes open because Miles hasn't even bothered to turn her around, Veronica spread open like a feast as his brother works his cock in and out of that delicious, sweet-tasting pussy. He wants to taste them together, wants to suck her clit and slide his tongue along Miles' cock and feel them jerking and clenching and pulsing under his tongue, but he's too far gone, and all he can do is listen as the groans and grunts and breathy little cries build to an agonised, ecstatic “Miles! Bass!”. He's smiling as he falls on top of them and lets sleep claim him.

Bass surfaces to Veronica wriggling as Miles hauls at his arm, trying to push him away – enough to let her breathe, he realises slowly. Enough to let her play, too, he groans as her fingers find the smears of cum decorating her pale, taut belly. Him, he thinks, rather than Miles, who'd come all over her back. Their eyes meet and hers are so full of mischief she's practically yelling brace, brace, brace.

“Mmmm,” she purrs, fingers trailing through the mess, swirling and tracing patterns that seem to delight her. Both of their eyes are riveted on her by the time she lifts her fingers to her mouth to slowly suck digit after digit clean.

All but one.

“He tastes good, Miles. Try?” she asks, holding out a slippery, white-coated finger, and Bass freezes, waiting for the familiar scowl to recolonise that beloved face. But Miles is all about surprises tonight.

“Maybe I will,” he shrugs, then leans right past her to plant his face in Bass' crotch, nuzzling and licking until his flaccid cock is desperate for a second chance, stiff enough to nudge at those questing lips, and when his astonished, disbelieving eyes meet a black, familiar hunger, suddenly much, much harder.

Miles is sucking him. Miles is sucking him and how can he be so hard again already and Veronica is making pleased little noises and turning herself around to lap at Miles like a kitten and just the sight of them, and fuck, he can't take this, not again, _please_ , again, _yes,_ please ...

*

They taste different, Veronica smiles. Of course they taste different, Bass so open and full of sunshine, and Miles a creature of the dark places, smoke and secrets and hidden lusts he refuses to admit.

Mostly. Miles is admitting them now, eyes locked with Bass as he sucks him off, his own cock jumping with every little grunt and moan that escapes from the other man's throat. She resisted for a little while - this had to be about them – but in the end, the lure of that long, elegant cock defeated her. Just a little taste, she promised herself, but then Bass' eyes widen at the sight of her nestling into Miles' groin, using one thigh as a pillow as she licks and bites and teases him into trying harder.

She has to readjust when Miles pushes up onto his knees, intent on sucking Bass dry. She wants to let him – god knows Bass deserves Miles on his knees for a change – but then she remembers the fierce _fuck yes_ of Bass' face as her words had sunk in. The way Miles had shrugged, but his eyes had glittered, telling her that one was definitely in the rotation. He'd probably been wanting it for years, castigating himself for it, too ashamed and repressed and caught up in being Miles fucking Matheson to just ask.

Time to sacrifice herself on the altar of brotherly love, Veronica thinks, unable to stop the grin that scrapes her teeth along Miles' cock. He shudders enough to convince her that she needs to stop _right now_ , and eases back, letting her lips catch on the sharply defined ridge before releasing him with a satisfying pop. He groans as if she's stabbed him, but she slides in behind him, sore nipples brushing against bony shoulderblades as she stretches up to whisper in his ear.

“Trust me. I'll make it up to you. But you can't let him come just yet.”

Veronica's hand wanders down the long plane of his back and she lets it linger at the base of his spine for a moment before drifting it into the crease of his buttocks. She circles him lightly, skimming her knuckle over the tender pucker of flesh, more of a message than an actual turn on.

He gasps anyway.

Any time now, Bass, she urges mentally, a little lost at what to do next. It's not something she's done herself, barely even considered doing (before now, a jaded little voice pipes up, because you know where this is going). The mechanics are fuzzy, at best. She knows Bass needs his cock, though, and Miles – well. Miles can wait a little longer. He's the one who likes to torture himself, after all. 

And if the ragged, broken pleasure she'd heard in Bass' voice more than once is anything to go by, Miles will more than get his. Assuming at least one of them knows what they're doing.

“Your tongue,” Bass rasps, voice low and deadly like she's only heard in a fight. “He needs to be slippery. Especially the first time.”

Miles shudders, and Veronica knows exactly why. Her body is still liquid from her last orgasm, but it manages to clench again, her sex flooding with anticipation. Maybe it was the thought of seeing them fuck, or maybe it was just his voice. She loves sunshiny, charming Bass, but that had been pure, icy command.

He plans to fuck Miles into the ground, and if she promises to be a very good girl, he'll let her help. 

The thought drags a moan out of her, and Bass is suddenly Bass again, checking she's okay with the faintest tilt of his head. She takes a deep breath and nods, then throws the last of her inhibitions over her shoulder.

“Keep talking like that, and I'll be wet enough for all three of us,” she confesses, dragging her hand between her legs to display exactly how he has affected her.

His eyes flick from her glistening hand to her face, and the sudden, unstoppable hunger on his face makes her knees shake. Somewhere, there are alarms shrieking, sirens howling, a million different kinds of danger, danger, danger. Miles is the one everyone is wary of, practically issued with a warning label, but it's Bass you won't see coming. Especially when he flashes that big, wide grin that makes you want to smile back - he could stab you in the heart and you'd die happy, Veronica thinks dazedly.

She's kind of ashamed of herself for finding it so hot.

Not so ashamed that she can stop herself from stepping closer, and letting him grab her hand. Not so ashamed that it even occurs to her to pull away when he uses her hand to show her what to do. Teasing little circles around the rim, wet slides over the pucker. Skittering touches that work their way up to a gentle push that makes Miles tense and puff out a breath.

Not so ashamed that she doesn't feel the dark thrill of being the one to do the fucking for a change, and immediately craves more. Another finger, perhaps, or maybe she could ...

“Steady does it,” Bass orders, reading her mind. “Miles needs to relax. Not that he doesn't know the drill better than I do,” he says, voice curiously edged. She's wondering about that when he smirks wickedly, then bends his head to lick around her finger, Miles rocking into it with a groan of delight.

“That's it. He can take another now,” he crows, voice suddenly rough. “Fuck, make him take your whole hand if you want to.”

Veronica stops breathing at the thought, and does her best to splay her fingers and pump them in and out a little. There's suddenly more room available, and as she glances down as Bass' short but thick cock, she realises more fingers is probably a mercy.

But what she really wants to do is watch.

She withdraws her fingers and takes Bass' still-wet cock in her hand, sliding it over the gaping hole she's left. It's mesmerising, pink and begging, and she teases it for a moment, sliding his cockhead all over the newly exposed flesh.

“Now?” Bass asks, voice guttural.

She has to force her breath through her lungs to answer, and Miles actually gets there first. “Please.”

Possibly the first time she's heard him say that, Veronica thinks uncharitably as she tries not to pass out at the spectacle of Bass pushing slowly into Miles' body, inches from her face. 

He inches in, then stops, then pushes in a little more. Miles is cursing, a litany of foul words that could be testament to pain, but then he slams himself backwards, forcing Bass deep inside. They seem to freeze for a moment, then Bass makes a broken noise, and withdraws, to slide gently back home. Just three thrusts, Veronica counts.

Three thrusts, before something more primal takes over.

Bass shoves Miles forward onto all fours, pulling his hips up to make sure they never lose contact. There's no room for error as he pistons in and out so fast, so hard, that Veronica is left agog. Surely they'll rip each other apart, like that. Surely it can't feel good. 

She dismisses that idea as she moves around in front of them. Miles has his head flung back, face stamped with an abandonment that she's never seen before. Not on this man, the dour, scowling misanthrope. It's the closest she's seen him come to joy, and with every slam of Bass' cock, his face edges closer to ecstasy.

Then Bass stops. Has he come? Is that how it goes with this type of sex, all for one and nothing for the other? Miles had seemed so close to something, and Veronica is offended on his behalf.

But she should never underestimate Bass.

He unfolds Miles from his position on the floor, hooking his arms under the taller man's elbows to force him up onto his knees and back against Bass' chest, spreadeagled like a debauched Irish Jesus. Miles is scarlet with arousal; spots of red high on sallow cheeks, a flush spreading down his chest, and reddest of all, his cock, eight inches of angry want bouncing against his belly as he tries to drive himself backwards onto Bass' cock.

Veronica is immediately riveted by the sight. She doesn't realise she's been licking her lips until Bass interrupts her with a chuckle that makes her blush.

“Fuck. You look lioness waiting to pounce,” he growls. “Do it. Suck him. Make him come like a fucking freight train.”

Veronica wants to tell him she doesn't take orders, but she's already shuffling forward on her knees, eyes fixed on her goal. She glances up to find Miles a study in frustration, mouth hanging open, back arched, seemingly crucified on Bass' invading cock. When their eyes meet, her breath catches at the plea in them, at the very _thought_ of Miles Matheson, begging. He groans the minute her hand touches his cock; shakes as she brings her mouth into the equation. When her teeth scrape him – accident or experiment, she's not sure – he makes a sound that could almost be a sob.

Bass starts to move again as Veronica works her way up and down the landscape of Miles' cock. By the time she is able to relax her throat and take him deeper, the rhythm is smooth and complementary, Bass fucking Miles forward onto her face, Veronica pushing him back before he chokes her. Back and forth they go, back and forth, until the pattern starts to falter, Bass pushing the pace beyond what she can handle. But she's hungry now, one hand working between her legs, his pleasure secondary to her need to swallow him whole, to suck and taste and triumph. His hoarse yell vibrates through her with a weird vicarious thrill and she finds she has swallowed - she never swallows! - without even registering the taste of hot seed in her mouth.

“Good girl,” Bass groans from somewhere up above and she wants to slap him because she needs to come _now_ , but Miles is wrecked and Bass is about to be and she knows they could make it so good for her, and they probably will, but she cannot wait. She's not waiting, throwing herself back onto the cushions on the floor and slapping herself into high gear, three fingers in precise synchronisation with Bass' plunging hips as she watches them, their faces, these two. The world had ended, and she'd just wanted to give up. They'd saved her. Maybe they had saved each other.

They could build a new world. Let the old one just drift away.

She doesn't have it in her, never did know how to let go, but just having thought it is a release on par with the sweet convulsions claiming her once more.

*

He drifts. Lost in a wilderness of warm flesh and solid bone, utterly content. 

Jesus he's a sentimental fuck.

Miles waits for the sting of self-hatred, and when it doesn't come, wakes himself up a little more. He's sore, every muscle aching, asshole on fire. He'd let Bass make a bitch of him, practically begged him for it. _Huh._

Still nothing.

He opens his eyes and contemplates their ungraceful sprawl on the rug. At least they're all completely nude, now, cuddled together under the blanket as the sweat cools on their skin. They should probably try to make it up to bed, but he doesn't like anyone's chances at the stairs. It had been too good.

Not just physical, he acknowledges.

Pure release. From the guilt, and from the shame. From the fear that's been plaguing him since she said she had to go.

There's a reason he's always the one to leave, Miles admits, motivations suddenly clear. He can't bear being left behind. He doesn't like to lead, because he's scared no one will follow. He can't ask for what he wants, because he couldn't handle it if someone said no.

But people need him to step up. And he's not doing this alone. Bass has his back – Bass has always had his back. Bass has never said no. And Bass will never leave.

As long as he has Bass, things will be okay. They'll figure it out together, even without cunning, clever Veronica Mars on their team. 

He can do this, Miles surrenders. He can let her go, because it's what she needs to do. He understands that. Respects it.

Prays that one day, they'll see her again.


	10. Chapter 10

_Twenty-eight weeks after the Blackout_

After two days of not leaving the house, they give up pretending they're doing anything but fucking themselves into a stupor. Early Thursday morning, someone knocks loudly on the door, and the two men look at each other and shrug. Veronica scowls at them, drapes herself in a blanket, and goes to check the peephole.

It's Taylor. With whom she's riding off into the dawn in less than 24 hours. And probably has a right to know she's still alive. Dammit.

“What?”

“Uh, Janette wanted to know if you were up breakfast?” she offers, obviously nonplussed by Veronica's rudeness.

Miles chooses that moment to appear behind her, barely managing to hide his nakedness behind Veronica's much smaller body. 

“We just ate,” he grins at Taylor, pulling Veronica back against him and dropping a kiss at the intersection of her neck and shoulder. If Taylor didn't know then exactly what they'd been doing five minutes before, Veronica's scarlet blush makes it vastly clear.

“O-kay then. Maybe Bass wants to come over for breakfast,” she recovers gamely, and Miles just shakes his head.

“Nope. We're all good,” he shrugs. “See ya,” he says pointedly and closes the door in her face.

She'll have to beg Taylor's forgiveness later, Veronica thinks as Miles steers her back inside, skirting around the still-sleeping Bass as they cross to the kitchen to make the lie a truth. They'd slept in Bass' bed, that first night, but it was simply too small for the three of them, so they'd built themselves a nest of cushions and blankets in front of the fire and only left to eat. (And even that had been turned into a sensual adventure more than once.) barely moved from there since. She's had more sleep than she's had since grade school, she remembers with a blush, but hey. She's earned it.

They hadn't really stopped, the first day and night. It had become surreal, after the first few times, a hurdy gurdy of arousal spinning them round and round, each bout of pleasure spilling into what happened next. Miles was still loose and languid from their simultaneous assault when he turned to her and practically ordered her to get herself off again.

“You deserve our full attention,” he smirked, and Bass had leapt to agree.

“I couldn't see properly,” he protested when she rolled her eyes at them, then proceeded to cover her in kisses until she agreed to perform for them. Serves him right, really. She'd pinched her nipples and stroked her flanks and spread her legs wide, narrating every little touch in a breathy, porn star voice that was obnoxiously effective. And then she told them to keep their hands to themselves.

“Uh uh,” she'd objected, stilling her fingers the minute they'd reached for each other's cocks. “Like I said. You want to watch? Then watch.” She'd added another finger then, their frustrated arousal winding her higher and higher until she was shaking with the need to come. She'd felt so empty though, and just the sight of Bass, lying on his back, eyes glued to her pussy as his cock waved like angry, red flag … her control had snapped, and she blushes now as she remembers how she'd flung herself at Bass, impaling herself in one long slide and fucking herself silly. 

Bass had almost folded in half with his need to touch her, but Miles had been enjoying their little game even more than she'd realised. She'll never forget how he'd swooped like a predatory bird, casually pinning the other man's arms under his knees, stemming the torrent of curses with a less-than-gentle swipe of his fist.

“Am I gonna have to gag you with my cock, soldier?”

Bass hadn't been able to hide how much he liked that idea, hips jerking up so hard that he'd almost flung her off him. She'd fought back, though, grinding down mercilessly before rising herself so high that he'd nearly slipped out. Only when he'd started to mumble her name did she relent, slamming back down with a shout of triumph. All bets had been off after that, every muscle she had gripping him tight as her orgasm ripped through them both, forcing him to submit to the same fate. Miles followed just seconds later, Bass catching him in a series of hungry gulps even as his cock continued to spill helplessly inside Veronica.

“Never guess he's make such a good little sub, would you?” Miles had joked afterwards, and Veronica hadn't been able to restrain her snort, before collapsing with laughter. She'd spent weeks hearing just how much Bass liked to yield – but had turned out to be Miles who was the revelation. After they'd blasted past everyone's boundaries that first night, he'd withdrawn at first, as if in shock. Then he'd started to unbend, bit by bit, as if Bass had managed to fuck away twenty years of shame and fear. He was still Miles - domineering, sarcastic, sometimes hateful – but his mouth relaxed, and he laughed, and smiled. Nor could he stop touching them - he would reach out and slide a hand down Bass' flank, gently, almost with wonder, or pull them both onto him and cuddle shamelessly.

It's probably just as well she's leaving, she tries to convince herself as she trails Miles into the kitchen. She could spend a lifetime with these two and still be surprised by everything they were. Friendship and love and lust and guilt tangled together and trussed up tight under a bunch of labels that helped no one. No matter what they called each other, they'd always be them, cast from some remarkable clay, and moulded by god-awful circumstance into a partnership that wasn't always pretty. Or healthy. 

Necessary, though, Veronica thinks sadly. They were scary together, but a disaster apart. She just has to resign herself to the fact that until they learn to accept who they are, their jagged edges will gouge and stab and wound each other right up to the point where they slot together to seamlessly complete the whole. 

The premonition prickles up her spine as she watches Miles boil water for their carefully hoarded coffee. Nobody's counting the days since the lights went out any more, or expecting them to just flick back on. The smart ones, the strong ones, are getting on with finding new ways of living, turning their backs on the past. And if these two can just figure themselves out, smooth all those jagged edges, something tells her their story is just beginning. 

Bass wanders in from the living room, stark naked as he gropes for a mug, and stands there, just waiting for someone to fill it. The tattoo is bold on his arm – “M for Monroe and M for Matheson, designed it when we were eight!” - and she has a sudden, sharp need to see it dark on her own skin, a tangible memory of the months they've spent together.

She's not coming back, she knows that. She'll probably never see them again. They'll be just another chapter in her story, she tells herself, once the emotions fade and the years put some distance between them. Maybe she'll be a mere footnote in theirs.

Lord, she's maudlin before her coffee.

Veronica sighs in satisfaction as the smell of the brew fills the room, and nestles back into Bass' golden torso as he leans against the counter. He's still half asleep, and his hands are lazy as they slide up and down her sides, the gentle caress meandering almost absent-mindedly over her nipples every so often.

“Morning,” he snuffles into her ear, and something about the hot puff of air seems to wake her body in earnest. By the time Miles is pouring coffee into three mugs, she is undulating against against him, morning wood finding a slippery welcome between her legs, even if the angle is frustratingly wrong. She's about to drag Bass back inside when Miles turns around, takes one look at her flushed face, and puts the cups safely to the back of the counter.

He crosses the room in one long stride that crushes her between them, Miles saying his own hello to Bass with an open-mouthed kiss that seems to go on forever somewhere over her head. Then she feels his hands under her knees, arms under her thighs, lifting her, turning her around, and sliding her down onto the other man's cock.

The cry of delight rips through the kitchen, making Miles growl against her back as he kisses his way along her shoulderblade.

“You take her,” he grunts to Bass, and it doesn't occur to her to wonder why until she feels a dribble of something sliding down between her butt cheeks. Cooking oil, she realises as his hands start to massage it into her skin. There had been two bottles in the cupboard when they'd moved in here, and they really shouldn't waste it, she wants to tell him. But his fingers whisper over her pucker for the first time, and she can't stop the full body shudder that takes her.

“Easy. Easy. We don't have do anything you don't wanna do. We can just play a bit,” he breathes into her ear, fingers still busy. She wants to tell him it feels good, not to stop, but her vocal cords have seized at the slippery eroticism of his fingers ghosting over places she never realised were so very sensitive. But maybe he figures it out when she lets herself sag backwards, chasing the sensation.

“Or not,” he growls, settling into a more focused pattern – circle, press, circle, press. “You gotta tell me though, girl. You want me like this?”

She wants to tell him she's not a girl. She wants to tell him she's not one hundred percent sure. She wants …

“Yeah,” she gasps. “Both of you. Like this.”

Bass stutters into a new rhythm at the thought and his hands shake underneath her; Miles bites down on her shoulder and wraps himself around them both.

“Oh yeah. That's gonna happen. Not your first time, but Jesus. Yeah. More than once.”

“Why not now?”

“Because we don't want to hurt you. Because we're gonna take our time, do it right,” Miles explains, voice matter-of-fact. Then he swallows, and she can feel the press of his thumb, insistent, as he makes his confession. “Because I'm gonna lose my mind when I'm inside you, and I can feel Bass. You need to be ready for that.”

Bass hasn't said a word, but he's still inside of her, stroking slowly as Miles gentles her into a place where she can feel herself opening to him, feel the stretch but not resist it. She cuddles into him, a little bit overcome, and Miles drops kisses into her hair before saying something to Bass she misses completely. Then he drops to his knees.

His tongue isn't a surprise, exactly, but the things it does to her are. Her knees jerk up, clamping even more tightly around Bass' waist, and her entire body convulses, forcing a gasp from Bass.

“Do that again,” he orders through clenched teeth, suddenly picking up the pace. She can feel the smile against her skin as Miles drifts his tongue over and around, up and down before flicking it back and forth over the tight ring of muscle. Her body is pulsing, actively trying to let him in, and she sobs with a mixture of delight and apprehension as he pushes one long finger up inside of her.

Miles lets her adjust, then starts to stroke. Veronica crinkles her nose at the strangeness of it all, making Bass chuckle, and their gazes are still locked when something hot and brilliant unleashes inside of her. She tries to communicate it, but no words come, just a wail that sounds like anguish. Bass knows better, though.

“Oh yeah, brother. That's it. You got her. Right there,” he chants, and starts to move more quickly. The slide of his cock pours thick, hot pleasure onto already electrified nerve endings and her hips start to buck uncontrollably, unable to decide between bearing down on the intruder in her ass, or slamming herself forwards into the battering ram plunging into her hungry sex. She twitches and undulates, before abandoning her attempts at conscious control.

Both, she thinks. Both, and fractures, her entire body seizing, then releasing, then seizing again so shockingly hard she comes with a shout, then slumps, dazed, against Bass' chest. He's cooing into her hair, moving slowly once more as Miles strokes his free hand down her back, slowly withdrawing his fingers.

“Just one more, Veronica. Just one more little one, for me,” Bass croons, and she smiles into his shoulder, lets her lips trace the line of muscle she finds there, and feels, and feels, and feels. He's so deep inside, he'll be there always. They both will, she knows, and feels herself start to flutter around him once more.

He buries his groan in her hair, and she feels him pick up the pace for a frantic second before he spills hot inside of her. It's the second time that's happened, her befuddled brain realises, but it's the thought that comes next that nearly shocks her out of her languor.

Maybe leaving won't hurt so much if she can take something of them with her.

*

Miles has his arms wrapped round them both, trying to ignore his throbbing cock as he cradles Bass and Veronica through the last shudders of their orgasm. He needs to come, but he needs to hold them even more. He feels rather than hears her intake of breath, and witnesses the moment she lifts her head to stare at Bass as if he's whispered an astonishing secret into her ear. Miles shoves the spurt of jealousy away; this is their last day together, and they'll each have their own goodbyes. At least he and Bass will have each other. Veronica … he shoves the thought away, knowing it only leads places that will leave him angry and stressed. She's going, and he'd promised Bass he'd be supportive or some such shit. Celebrate the good times, he'd begged.

Well, good times he can do.

He reviews her list in his head and ticks it off, one by one. They've tasted each other in more ways than he can count, they've tried things he didn't even know he liked, they've sailed right past a whole bunch of firsts for each of them, but one.

It won't be the first time they've shared a woman, but it'll be a first, nonetheless. It'll be the first time it's someone they both care about. It'll be the first time they've managed to own up to exactly what they're doing. Three points of a triangle, each connected with the others. Him and Bass, as much as him and Veronica, or Veronica and Bass.

He's never wanted something so much in his life.

Miles concentrates on bringing them down from their high, washing his hands then grabbing a cloth to sponge Veronica clean. If he lets himself think about this too much, he'll go mad with lust. Or dwell. Bad things tend to happen when he dwells.

So he lets Bass carry her into the other room, then follows behind with the coffee, waving it under their faces before they tumble back down into sleep. They end up on the couch together, Bass' feet in his lap as Veronica sprawls across his chest.

“Need help with that?” Bass asks, and Miles wants to say no, he's capable of controlling a fucking coffee cup, when Bass' bare toes nudge at his still hard cock. Oh. 

“I'm good,” he practically squawks. Thinking about you and me fucking this girl together. And maybe just you and me. And how you turned me inside out last night, and made me love it.

He could be just a little freaked, Miles admits. He'd spent years telling himself that being inside Bass was no different to being inside a woman, but his ass still throbs with something that finally, he can't lie about. Can't deceive himself.

And colour him surprised by just how satisfying he'd found it being the one to yield. Would they have gotten there on their own? Could have happened, he thinks, but not like that. He'd never once doubted Bass in battle, never needed to worry about who had his back, but to just roll over like that, and give it up? It's a different sort of trust, one he didn't think he was capable of. 

Probably wasn't capable of, until her. She'd taken a leaf out of his own fucking book, and shoved him off a cliff, leaving it up to him to learn how to fly. The woman might eviscerate you with that tongue of hers, but she'd see right through you while she did it. And make you see everything you'd been hiding from yourself, Miles admits with a grimace.

Like a fifteen-year gay love affair with your best friend. Every part of you screaming for him, barely able to function apart, but unable to see it for what it was. Hating yourself, and punishing him. Disguising it and dirtying it up, making it about the pain, the kink. And the warmth? The bone-deep devotion? You lie, and call it brotherhood, even though you have a brother, and you've never wanted to fuck him.

And he doubts he'll ever be able to get past this properly, to look at Bass without hearing his father's hate, and what it had made him do to Bass. That's the guilt that really eats at him. The things he'd said, the taunts and the teases and the spiteful fucks that screamed self-hate. And the way Bass had always been so hungry for him, he'd take Miles' bullshit anyway. That had nearly broken him.

That had nearly broken them, and she'd bashed their heads together, told Bass to stay away, sent him to fucking purgatory to work it out, then refused to let him off the hook until he got it. Held him accountable.

His whole life, Bass had been the one making him face up to shit, but this had been the one thing he hadn't been able to do. Couldn't even really understand - Bass had never doubted it, never questioned himself, never been afraid of who he was. He'd loved Veronica for who she was, but Miles owed her. She gave him this. The razor sharp clarity of Miles-loves-Bass-and-the-world-can-go-fuck-itself. Miles will thank God for Veronica every day for the rest of his life.

Even when he inevitably fucks it up.

But until that day, he's gonna dig deep, and try. It's not just Veronica he owes, he knows that. Miles can feel Bass watching him, waiting, so he pushes the words out his throat, as rusty as if he'd never begged for another person's touch before.

“But I bet you could make it better.”

*

Just the feel of Miles' cock twitching under his toes drags a shudder out of him. It might even be pure joy, Bass realises, because he's never seen that before. He knows Miles' broody face better than he knows his own, and somehow, he pulled himself back from the brink. He just … let it go. Dropped his head back onto the back of the couch, and surrendered to the feeling.

Even if he was able to jerk the guy off with his toes that wouldn't be reward enough how that'd made him feel.

Bass slides Veronica out of his lap, handing her his coffee with a wink, before falling face first into Miles' lap. He licks lightly, worshipfully, mindful of the fact that Miles is still morning-hard, deprived of even a single orgasm while he and Veronica have just shouted the roof off. So he's going to make this slow.

It's the play of hot breath over his face that makes him aware Veronica has finished her coffee, and climbed between Miles' legs to help him out. Their lips and tongues brush together as they work in tandem, not even having to discuss the fact that this is an endurance race, rather than a sprint to the finish. He'll come so much harder that way.

The air above them is filling with a profane stream of sound, _oh fuck,_ and _God yeah_ and cacophony of strangled noises that Bass suspects are Miles simply running out of words. His eyes meet Veronica's and they silently agree to up the ante, Bass allowing his teeth to come into play, and Veronica yanking at his legs to pull Miles forward to the edge of the seat. It gives her access to his balls, and Miles starts to jerk as she sucks first one, and then the other, deep into her mouth.

Bass backs off then, barely flicking his tongue over the head of Miles' cock, and letting Veronica ratchet the tension higher. His brother is practically flailing by the time he gets serious again, hips windmilling as he slams his cock down Bass' throat, shooting his load within seconds.

Miles in the throes of post-orgasmic bliss is all hands, pulling Bass into his side and scooping Veronica straight off the floor to curl up on his chest. She leans over to drag her tongue over Bass' lips, pouting.

“None for me?” she jokes, eyes twinkling, and his heart practically explodes.

“Kiss me properly, woman, and find out,” he shoots back, waggling his tongue at her in lewd invitation.

She does, of course. Something tells him she has never backed down from a dare in her life, and her tongue strokes over his own before sliding over his teeth, and tickling his soft palate, straining to find every last drop of Miles' flavour. 

“No chance, Veronica. You'd need to inspect his tonsils - I was halfway down his fucking throat,” Miles smirks at them without even bothering to open his eyes properly. 

“Handy skill,” she says when she finally lifts her head. “I'll just have to scrape by on enthusiasm,” she says, lips curving into an exaggerated moue. 

“Are you – Veronica Mars, are you pouting?” Bass marvels with an astonished laugh, delighted to see the soft, playful side she guards so closely.

Veronica doesn't bother to answer, simply a raising a brow at him as she nestles back down into Miles' chest, seemingly intent on falling back asleep now that they were all satisfied. You take what you need, girl, he thinks, chest suddenly tight. Gonna miss you so bad.

One day, he vows, they'll track her down again. Neptune, California. Once they've found Ben and his family, and created some sort of safety for the ragtag bunch that had decided to follow them, they'd go looking for Veronica. Just him and Miles.

But that's years away, and it's nearly lunchtime already. Barely 20 hours left. And his two lovers are already dozing off.

“Lightweights,” he scoffs, ignoring their grumbles as he pries himself off the couch. Miles has given him an idea, and someone should check the others are ready to go tomorrow.

And if they're not awake by the time he gets back, it's going to be a hell of a lot of fun waking them up.

*


	11. Chapter 11

_Something warm and wet, tugging at her nipples. Soft, brushing across her belly. More, please, she moans, then stutters into don't stop, don't stop, don't stop. His eyes glint black as he lifts his head, his adept tongue branding him the bad boy better than the tattoos ever did. The brush of his goatee, the smooth scalp between her thighs … and over her shoulder, the other one, watching._

“Veronica.”

_She reaches up to taste him, salt and sand and Neptune sea, eight years of her life tied up in those whiskey-brown eyes, that silken tongue that so often dripped with spite. She moans, remembering, backpedalling, but she's held still, dark hands on her hips and soft, Spanish sibilants licked into her skin. Licked into his, both of them watching her as Eli traces his tongue over the head of Logan's cock._

“Wake up, beautiful. Clock's a ticking.”

_Tick, tick, tick and there's only one numeral left on the clock, a huge, red six. Six years since she last saw her mother. Six days before everything stopped, talking to her Dad on the phone. Six months with them. Her boys, but they're men now, already fading, weathered soldiers and fresh-faced teenagers and everyone she loves, always slip, slip, slipping away …_

Her face is wet with tears as her eyes open, no longer sure who she'll see. Whose hands are stroking her hair, whose chest is rising and falling underneath her, oblivious to her panic.

Bass, comforting her. Miles, sleeping on.

He's been out, she realises slowly, the basket of food beside their nest full of produce that sure as hell didn't come from their garden. Her nose twitches as the smell of fresh bread rises to meet her, telling her he'd been past the newly up-and-running town bakery, and then … fresh butter. He'd been to see Tony and Jeanette, who'd traded their milk cows for new wheels on the wagon, but not before churning one last, precious batch of butter.

He's brought them breakfast in bed, she realises. Except … at lunch. The sun pouring in through the windows suggests it's well past noon. Veronica's heart clenches as she realises she's been sleeping it away, this last day they'll have together.

Bass is saying something, soft words in that silken tone that had made her shiver from the first moment she woke up, nearly six months ago. He doesn't mean to do it, she knows now, probably doesn't even realise the seductive power he holds, but Veronica's seen it work on everyone in the town. Sometimes it occurs to her how dangerous a Pied Piper he could be, luring them all to their destruction as the rats, dogs, children, and adults alike follow merrily behind.

She shakes the ridiculous thought away to discover he's been out there, doing her rounds. Making sure she'll have everything she needs – and then some – for her departure tomorrow.

“Tony says Jeanette's filly came up lame, so they've done a swap with old man Cooper for his big bay. Not as young, but he can double pulling the cart. Taylor is antsy to get going, and wondered if you could put things back to first light, but I said no, seven was early enough. Luz and Javier said they hope you'll sleep in the back of the wagon with them, and to bring your Harry Potter book.”

He breaks open the loaf even as he finishes the report, and smears the butter over the steaming centre, before handing her a hunk and sitting back against the couch to happily chomp away at the other half himself.

“Thanks,” she mumbles around a mouthful, and he beams at her over his own appreciation of the still-warm bread.

“Figured you'd need your strength,” he smirks when he's done. “Big plans for you today.” 

“Sure, Monroe. No way you were just being a nice guy. Romantic, even,” she teases softly, sliding out of Miles' arms to climb in his lap. “Trust me. I have some plans of my own,” she leers, starting to pop the buttons of his shirt free. “How dare you put clothes on.”

“Didn't want to scare any more of the neighbours away,” he murmurs, dropping his lips to her neck, sucking and biting there as if he can brand himself into her skin. He works his way up to her mouth only to nibble and lick at her lips, his tongue worshipping every contour before stealing inside to stroke her own. They are still kissing, slow and sweet, when Miles rouses next to them.

“You two at it again?” he croaks, but there's an almost-smile on his face, and his eyes never once leave them as he reaches for the basket. “All good?”

Bass lifts his head to nod. “Think they just wanted to check Veronica was still alive this morning. Everyone's ready to go. Now it's just about the goodbyes.” 

Veronica grimaces, knowing she needs to leave the house at some point if they are going to get away clean tomorrow. She has a small pile of books to pass to Jeremy and his sisters, and she wants to double check exactly how she's meant to germinate the precious pile of seeds Tally Richards had given her. This afternoon, she'll climb up the hill to say a final goodbye to Judge Purfitt, who'd been shaky on his feet lately and probably wouldn't make it down tomorrow. Everyone else, she decided, could wait 'til morning. Not like they expected to get away particularly quickly anyway.

Right now, she plans to focus on her lunch, to enjoy the warm bread, the fresh butter, the clutch of sticky fingers at her hips as Bass pushes her backwards a little to find every last crumb that has cascaded down her front. “Mmmm,” he hums as he licks along her collarbone then follows her sternum down to nip at the undersides of breasts, her flanks, the tautness of her belly. There's a corresponding rumble from Miles behind her, moulding himself to her back and reaching over to plunge one hand into Bass' hair as he turns their faces together, foreheads touching, just breathing each other in. Veronica takes the warmth of the moment and stows it away so that she has something to remember other than the months of circling each other, the weeks of discord, then the scary, headlong tumble into exploring their sexual connection.

Would it have been this, if they'd succumbed earlier? Or would it have been a more physical thing, mere bodyparts and lust, if they'd fed this itch from the start? She'll never know, Veronica has to accept, because it had been her choice to keep them at arms length until she'd committed to her path. No going back, she thinks sadly. No second chances.

She'd made it the story of her life, and not even the Blackout could teach her different, she thinks grimly, then pushes it away to lose herself in the rising heat.

*

Miles watches Veronica's face, and marvels at the ebb and tide of emotion he can see there. No one would say he was good at reading people – that was Bass – but with this woman, he'd never had a clue. She guarded herself so fiercely, pulling on cute and funny and acid like a succession of masks, and just when you thought you were getting to see the real girl underneath, her eyes would flash, and you'd realise, no. You're not seeing her yet.

He'd had the occasional glimpse, he thinks. The steel in her eyes as she watched the kids train. The softness when she shared her favourite book with little Luz. Raw temptation on her face before she'd bolted, that first day he and Bass had 'fessed up to wanting her. 

All that, yet he's never seen her _this_ naked.

He stares into her face as he breathes her in, but even as her eyes slip shut he can see the wistfulness in them, the sense that she's saying goodbye with every touch of her hands. Then her mouth thins for a moment, and she's suddenly bitter, eyes glassy with resentment and something that looks like regret. Miles shudders, knowing exactly what he'll see next. Anger. She refuses to feel sorry for herself, to second-guess her decisions. That way lies madness. And yeah, the way she's forcing herself back into the moment? He recognises that tactic too.

Veronica has sunk her teeth into Bass' shoulder, shimmying in his lap with a determination that's going to fling them both towards a minor orgasm pretty damn soon, the way she's going. Recognition gnaws at him, stealing his enjoyment of the show. If you can't run from all the nasty feelings, hide. If you can't hide, lose yourself some other way, he acknowledges, then forces himself to shake it off. Who is he to judge?

The smile steals across his face before he can slap it into submission. Who is he? Just the guy who's been fucking away his feelings for years, so maybe it's time to put all that experience to good use. Girl wants oblivion? Well, that's one thing he can give her.

Miles slams his hips in tight, mashing his cock against her slender back, the bolt of pleasure-pain forcing him to pull hard on Bass' crazy curls. He didn't exactly mean to do it, but there's a reason he likes to get his hands in the other man's hair – it drives Bass fucking insane, and today, Veronica is the lucky recipient as his brother bucks like a mechanical bull, driving himself deep into her folds. Veronica wriggles desperately as she tries to impale herself on him, but the angle's not quite right. Miles doesn't even think before shoving the other man flat onto his back, then grabbing Veronica by the hips to drag her back onto the other man's cock. She's still gasping in surprise when he plants his hand between her shoulder blades and slowly pushes her down onto Bass' chest. 

He leaves it there for a long minute, and knows she's jumped to exactly the right conclusion when she stills for a moment, then arches her spine, lifting her little round ass high and clear, Bass' straining cock visible below. His voice is like sandpaper when he forces himself to ask, rather than obey his body's screams to just _take_.

“You sure, Veronica?” 

“You gonna make it good for me?”

Bass answers for him. “Like nothing you've ever felt, baby. So good. All three of us, together.”

Miles slides his hand down her back to drift it over the lush globes of her ass, his tactile version of the same answer. Veronica yelps in response, tipping her ass higher than he thought possible, the arch in her back begging him to drop kisses there. He nips at the sweet flesh, hard enough to make her moan, and he's smiling as he follows her spine down to the place he's been dreaming about for months now. Since that first day she'd roasted them both in the furnace of her scorn, when he and Bass had looked at each other, and years of pain had been drowned out by the sudden chorus of _this one, this one, this one_.

And that was before she'd even started to lead them back to each other.

He owes her for that, Miles thinks fiercely. This might be the only way he can show her just how much, so yeah, it's gonna be good. He pushes down the need hammering at him to focus on the way her skin is skittering under his fingers: arousal, probably, but it could be nerves. Might even be fear. She's always thinking, this woman, but he can change that. He will change that.

Mindless, he decides as he drags his fingertips over her ass so lightly that he's not sure the touch will even register. Past fear, past shame, past embarrassment. He'll tickle and tease and stroke her into a place so completely sensate, they'll just sigh into each other, the three of them, finally one.

“Shhh, that's it,” he kisses into her skin, flickering his tongue out to leave a damp trail from one patch of skin to the next. He lifts his head to catch Bass' astonished gaze, and holds it, begging his cooperation. “Gentle,” he mouths, and the sap gets a tear in his eye. 

Miles flushes. So maybe he's not usually like this. He has always preferred his fucking hard and fast, but not this time. Not with Veronica. He doesn't want to dominate this woman into taking him. He wants to slide into a desperate, heartfelt welcome, the sort of I-need-you-inside-me fuck that's as emotional as it is physical. The sort he's always shied away from with women, because he could never give them his entire heart and soul. 

But Veronica doesn't want that. Has no need for that – maybe this is nothing more to her than just another round of goodbyes. But they are hers, now. Both of them. Whether it's for this week, today, just this last night, doesn't matter. This is their union, and even if they never see her again, she'll take a part of each of them when she goes. Bass' soul, and his, together forever, he thinks fancifully as he lays his cheek against the roundness of her bottom. No safer place than with Veronica.

They're almost entirely still as he lets his breath play over the crease of her buttocks, one finger sliding idly up and down, making her breath catch as it traverses the sensitive tissues north and south of her pucker. He parts her cheeks to blow a little, then wriggles closer to flick his tongue over the quivering ring of flesh. She starts to shake, then, and Bass groans as if even those tiny movements will push him towards insanity. Miles wants to roll his eyes, but his own cock is leaking all over his belly, and he hasn't been inside her yet. Better move things along.

Just inches from his face, he can see Bass' cock sliding in and out of her sex, so wet with her juices that he glistens. He waits a beat, two, then slides his hand between them, clenching Bass tight in his fist for a moment, then slicking his hand down to steal as much of that delicious stickiness as he can. He avoids the temptation to take his fingers straight to his mouth, and slicks around her pucker instead. Not enough, though, he smirks, and takes a second helping, this time plunging directly into her pussy alongside the heft of Bass' cock. 

“Jesus H Christ,” she cries out, reminding him to swipe his thumb across her clit to ensure the invasion brings her nothing but pleasure. She rewards him with a gush of moisture so sustained he knows he has just tipped her over the edge. Bass won't be able to resist for much longer, not with Veronica spasming around him, so it's now or never.

(Not never, he corrects himself. Never hurts too much. Just now. There's just now.)

Now is his little finger, slippery with her own juices, and his tongue, skirting round and round until she starts to push back on a guttural groan. Now is another finger, then another, and the air filled with breathy curses and moans. Now is him blanketing them both, a long, wet kiss with Bass, who has surrendered to the demands of his body and stopped moving altogether, and Veronica, mewling and begging as she scratches her nails down his side, desperate for more sensation.

“So fuck me then,” Miles says, more order than invitation, but hey. He tried. He lifts his hips to slide the tip of his cock back and forth over the hungry red flesh he has persuaded to flower open, but Veronica slams her hips backwards, patience exhausted. Bass fills the air with curses, but Miles is beyond focusing on his brother's predicament, his cock suddenly screaming as it moves into the painfully tight grasp of Veronica's ass.

“Ah. Ah! Is it meant to feel like that? I'm not sure ...” he can hear Veronica's discomfort and he pushes away the haze to pull backwards, but Veronica moves with him instead, pushing him deeper. There's a low hum, Bass dripping honey in her ear, and Miles has to close his eyes in gratitude as then tension flows out of her body, and liquid sensuality takes it's place.

Bass is stroking again, he realises, and there's another sort of tension building already, and _fuck_. He's no even two inches inside of her but the heavy presence of Bass' cock is already tickling him through the thin barriers inside her body. And she's pushing back onto him again, taking more of him until she stills, and breathes, and they clutch at each other, overwhelmed.

When she speaks, her voice is a husky croak, unlike anything he's ever heard from her.

“I need to come now.”

Bass's shudder of relief makes her snort, but Miles is too focused on worming his hand between them to find her clit to rib his brother about his staying power. Veronica purrs as he glides the pads of his fingers over the sensitive area, circling the hard little nub then pulling away to massage around the entire area. He circles back, tweaks at it, then circles away again, all the while burying himself deeper and deeper. Her every muscle is tight with tension by the time he growls at Bass, and they start to move in tandem, Miles' downstroke slamming home to be stroked into madness by Bass' upstroke, Veronica vibrating between them, no longer able to do anything other than feel. 

She's close, they're all so close, he can't coordinate his fingers anymore. Miles clumsily opens the lips of her sex wide, tugs on the hood of her clit and abandons her to the mercy of friction, flattening her onto Bass' plunging cock with the weight of his own body. She starts to keen – friction, he thinks smugly before conscious thought frays – and Miles reaches past her to grab Bass' hips in both hands, forcing him keep their rhythm as his body jerks into its long overdue orgasm. Miles tries to stroke in counterpoint, but, but … Veronica's shout, her every muscle contracting around him, her entire body jerking and shaking with the release, washes over him like a benediction. He wants to fuck her right through it, he does, but he's already let go, already coming, her body milking him and Bass' hands locked around his back and Veronica moaning her satisfaction underneath him and all he can do is sink into them, replete. Satisfied.

Maybe even happy, the thought lashes him as blackness beckons.

*

Bass battles his way out a weird dream of a black and white flag and strange, old-fashioned uniforms to find he's crushed under the weight of two people, Veronica curled up on his chest and Miles sprawled over his legs, both still passed out.

His cock is comfortably quiescent for what feels like the first time in months, even if it twitches a little when he remembers what they've just done. The intensity of it, Miles' black eyes staring into his own as Veronica lay pinioned between them, the desperate need to come as he moved in her silky depths, the iron-hard clasp of Miles' discipline forcing him to hold the line. The moment Veronica's eyes had shot open, astonishment and shock and fast-approaching bliss, as he and Miles had settled into their rhythm, pulling her back and forth between them like the tide. Everything after that is a blur, he has to admit, which suggests he's never going to hear the end of it for going first, but he does remember that moment of pure communion, the three of them shuddering in each other's arms, spent, Veronica's little whimpers of satisfaction and Miles actually smiling.

This always was Miles' absolute favourite thing, Bass sighs, but for the first time, it doesn't hurt.

He pries himself out from under their slumbering bodies and stretches, crossing to the window that looks back over the valley, half-shadowed in the late afternoon light. Veronica had said something about visiting old man Purfitt, and if she wanted to make it there and back before dark … he sighs at the thought of waking her, and decides to start the fire first. Warm water and a cloth will make the whole process more fun for everyone.

He starts at her feet, and works his way up. She's pushing herself into his hands by the time he makes it as far as her breasts, trying not to get too worked up by the state of her skin, beard rashed and covered in hickeys and sticky from the waist down.

He'd come inside of her, he remembers, in a sudden moment of clarity. And not for the first time. Maybe she was one of the women who still had a stash of birth control pills. Or an implant.

Maybe they should keep her here, just to find out, something inside of him roars. It'd be easy enough to do – send someone else with Jeanette and Tony, tell everyone Veronica was too sick to travel. She'd be pissed, and she'd have a right to be, but if there was a baby … she'd come round. 

“Bass?”

He blinks out of the fugue to focus on her sharp little face, and shakes away the cobwebs of his delusion. He knows he tends towards overprotective, they both do, but Jesus. She's not some broodmare to be locked up and kept safe. That's scary fucked up. 

“You okay, brother?”

He tries to smile and pretend he hasn't just freaked himself out. It's just a random, stray thought, he reassures himself. Blame it on lack of sleep or something. 

Miles wouldn't let him do it, anyway. He'd been calling bullshit on Bass' crazy plans since they were in elementary school.

“Yeah, man. Just – “

Miles makes a constipated face and pushes himself upright to throw his arm over Bass' shoulder, patting gingerly as if the nasty emotions might be catching. “I know, Bass. I know.”

No, you really don't, Bass thinks sadly, busying himself with picking up the remains of their picnic. He manages to manufacture a smile by the time he looks up again, and it turns genuine as he watches Miles lever Veronica to her feet.

“Up and at 'em, tiger. You had things to do, remember?” 

It's the Miles version of supportive, Bass knows. Neither of them want her to go, but they've both accepted it.

(That traitorous little whisper in his head can shut the fuck up, because he knows the difference between right and wrong, and Miles is there to pull him back when he goes too far. Besides, Veronica will do what she needs to regardless of what they have to say, and yes, it's irritating as hell, but it doesn't mean he can't respect that. It's probably why they …)

Bass won't let himself finish the thought, because she's leaving, and it's gonna hurt enough as it is. But at least he knows now. Miles isn't the only person in the world for him. There will be somebody else, one day.

And he can't help but hope she's a lot like Veronica Mars.

*

Laurie, Bonnie and Tilly Baker are already ooh-aahing over the small stack of paperbacks when Veronica lets Jeremy see her out of the Baker house.

“Make sure your mom goes to see Mrs Hendrix,” she tells him again, knowing how stubborn the older woman is. “She needs to get rid of that cough.”

“Yeah, yeah,” he rolls his eyes. “I'll do what I can, Veronica,” he says, dubious, and all she can do is reach up to pat him on the shoulder. He's grown a foot in the past six months, decent food and the last years of his teens ensuring he looms over her, shoulders wide enough to block out the sun. He's a good shot, Miles had said recently, and Bass liked to keep the boy close on his rounds, convinced he'd make a good leader someday.

“What?”

“Just thinking about what might have happened if you hadn't attacked us that day,” Veronica says baldly. “Of all the people it might have been – I'm glad it was you, Jeremy.”

A scalding blush rises to his cheeks, but his eyes are steady on her own as he replies. “What you did for us – what Bass and Miles did – I won't forget that. I won't forget who I could have been if they didn't come along,” he promises, and she nods, content. Jeremy was proof positive that monsters weren't born, they were made. Bass and Miles needed that reminder as much as Jeremy did, or they'll never get past that basic instinct to slay them all.

“Stick with them, hey?” she asks, and Jeremy's slightly mocking smile reassures her he's never even imagined another outcome.

The conversation is still weighing on her mind as she exits Judge Purfitt's later in the day, arms stacked high with a hand-picked selection of law books. She'd protested lack of space and the fact she'd couldn't promise to keep them safe, but to no avail.

“You have a responsibility, girl. That's civilisation as we know it, right there,” the old man said, nodding at the leather-bound tomes. “I have plenty more right here, but who knows what you'll find where you're going?”

The Hearst law library, she thinks, but snaps her mouth shut instead. She has to assume she'll make it that far, but … maybe the books won't. Maybe she'll find someone else who needs them more along the way.

“Ah, now she understands,” he guffaws, then bends to wrap her in a hug. “Stay safe, girl. Go with God. Drop me an email when things get back to normal.”

She hasn't heard it in months, that belief that one day, the lights will just flick back on, their computers will boot up, and the old life will just shudder back into being. The pang of desperate want twists in her belly, and she hides her tears against his arm.

It's not until she's walking away, his beloved books heavy inside her backpack, that she realises he didn't believe it either.

The yellow shutters she'd loved since the first moment she'd seen them are glowing in the last of the day's light when she steers her tired legs into through the gate.

“You're back! Miles was about to send out a search party,” Bass says as he eases the backpack from her shoulders. “He gave you _books_?”

“Civilisation as we know it,” she repeats, her smile as sad as it is fond. “Just 'cause you'd prefer Led Zeppelin and a working TV.” 

“My phone, thanks. Led Zeppelin, Guns 'n'Roses _and_ the Fooeys on that sucker.”

They are still arguing rock bands when Miles stomps in, trying to hide his annoyance at the hours she spent on the hill. Away from them, his body language yells, while the clock ticks down their last hours together.

“Huh. Got an hour 'til that stew is ready. Wonder what we can do,” Veronica interrupts his monologue about the woeful state of the maps she plans to take, and Taylor's ineptitude at packing.

Miles smacks her with a filthy look, and she responds with a slow, showy stretch that conveniently thrusts her breasts up and out while ironing out all the kinks in her back. The grumpy bastard pretends not to notice.

“Oh, my clothes. They're just so – uh – binding,” she playacts, pushing her t-shirt up as she drags a hand over her belly. Bass, stirring his stew at the far end of the kitchen, shakes with silent laughter, while Miles glares at her from under shaggy brows, so she rolls her eyes and yanks the t'shirt right off. Then her bra.

“Jesus, Miles. Do you need a written invitation? I don't want to argue. I want the opposite of arguing,” Veronica snaps, exasperated.

Bass is suddenly behind her, hands sliding round her belly to undo her jeans. “Are you sure about that? Because there's a lot to be said for an angry fuck,” he rasps in her ear, hands suddenly rougher as he shoves her jeans down.

She's face down on the kitchen table before she gets a chance to draw breath.

“Didn't realise you were angry with me,” Veronica gasps, a little bit appalled at how ridiculously wet she is. She'd seen that side of Miles, and hated it. Sure, she'd come hard imagining it more than once, but … this was just a game, wasn't it?

Out of the corner of her eye, she catches Miles clenching his jaw, fists tight. And when Bass speaks, his voice is raw with honesty. 

“Of course I'm angry. You chose to leave us, Veronica. I don't do well with people leaving, and Miles' default is angry. So you're gonna get one chance, Veronica. Yes or no.”

Punish me, something inside of her cries, but she refuses to give it air. She can say no. She should, but … she can hear them breathing above her, not even touching her, and her sex clenches so hard it hurts. No buts, then.

“Yes,” she squawks, and then braces herself.

The reverent kiss between her shoulder blades comes as a shock, but then Bass shoves her higher, feet dangling in the air as he drives his fingers into her wet pussy. Miles takes advantage of her head lolling off the end of the table to grab her by the hair and yank her mouth high enough to take his cock.

He hisses filthy words as she tries to suck, mashing her face against his groin as Bass takes her hard, slamming her hips into the wood of the table as he practically climbs on top of her. Then they switch, and it's Miles who pulls her upright, fucking up into her as he pinches and squeezes her aching nipples between unforgiving fingers, Bass jerking himself brutally nearby.

She's a mess when they finish, and they can barely look at each other. Until Miles breaks the silence, his apology heavy in the air.

“Fuck, I needed that,” he says quietly, then lifts her out of the chair she's taken refuge in to surround her with his body. “Sorry, sweetheart. But I can't pretend this doesn't hurt. Neither of us can.”

Bass had fled back to the kitchen, after, but he'd obviously heard their discussion, and returns, shamefaced, to stand behind them and run a hand over her hair. Their tenderness flays her like a whip, and Veronica has to hide her face in Miles' shoulder for a long minute before she can speak. 

“I want to stay,” she confesses, raw and vulnerable like she's never been before.

Miles looks at her, and his smile is a million years old, and weary. “Yeah. You want to, but you won't. I don't want to be some sort of babysitter to this town. But I will.”

“Sometimes, I like it too much. I like the power,” Bass admits lowly. “I try to stomp it down, but ...”

Miles makes an impatient noise that dismisses all of their frailties. For all that she's the one with the fancy degrees, and Bass the one with the golden tongue, it's Miles who can cut through the bullshit best. When it isn't his own.

“It's who we are,” he says shortly. “What makes us different. We do the things we have to, not what we want to. So you're going to go,” he says, nodding at Veronica, “and you and I are going to handle shit here. Together,” he frowns at Bass.

Dread tiptoes along her nerve endings, the plea tumbling out before she can stop it.

“Promise me. Promise you'll stay together. Be together,” she says lowly. “You need each other more than you realise. You balance each other out.”

Bass' shuttered smile tells her he's never considered any other possibility, and her heart aches for him. Because Miles can't quite look at Bass, smoothing her hair off her forehead instead, conflict churning in those dark chocolate eyes. The ass. What, exactly, does he have against happily ever after?

She knows, of course. Fucked up for life. She's more than acquainted with the type. Lives with it every day, in fact.

Some things you never get over. Some people leave marks on your soul. And no matter how awful and horrible and downright scary it is, home is always home.

Ten hours. She needs eat, then get some sleep.

Maybe tomorrow she'll learn how to let go.


	12. Chapter 12

_Twenty-nine weeks after the Blackout_

She kisses them goodbye inside the house, long and desperate and clutching at each other to stay standing, then keeps her head high for the walk through the village to their rendezvous point. Half the town had turned out to see them go, kids bouncing around as if going on an adventure was the best thing ever, and adults quiet and solemn, pressing small gifts of food into their hands as if provisioning them for a trip across the River Styx.

She shivers at the echo of the past, and wonders what Neptune's bully boys are doing now. The Fitzpatricks had been violent, lawless anachronisms prior to the Blackout, and if they managed to survive, it's probably serving them well now. You'll know soon enough, Veronica thinks, maybe even before the year is out. Across the Plains, then they turn south, into the desert country, Arizona and then Nevada. And from Las Vegas, once they've found Javier and Luz's parents, it's two weeks at the most, striking west across the desert to Neptune.

(She's distracting herself, she knows, because Miles is tightening the girth on the horse he insisted she take, and Bass is having a last word to Tony, telling him to keep them all safe. But soon, soon … they'll be leaving, clip-clopping away, back to hunting every day and setting up camp at night and always someone on watch and … no warm bodies wrapped around her in front of the fire. No more “strip, now” smirks from Miles, or those hot stares Bass seems to specialise in, the ones that tell her he's remembering the way she tastes.) 

The world fractures a little before Veronica can blink back her tears, and it's not until a hesitant hand lands on her back that she realises she hasn't quite managed to hide it. 

“We'll be okay, Veronica,” Taylor says. “And so will they. And by the time we get to California, they'll probably have the power back on. Next time we see them, they'll probably be running the entire East Coast,” she grins, as if it's the funniest joke in the world.

But Veronica's not quite listening, because there's something on the wind, teasing her. She shakes her head, unable to believe it, but she'll never forget that tinkling, I've-got-a-secret laugh. Her best friend. The world's peppiest ghost. Has Lilly come to see her off?

Veronica dismisses the sudden bout of crazy as too much high emotion, and gets on with her goodbyes. When they finally roll out, Taylor and Veronica on horseback either side of Janette and Tony's wagon, Javier and Luz waving gaily from the back, she gulps lungfuls of fresh, cleansing air and tries to let it all go. The sense of loss. The terrible feeling she's made the wrong decision. The fear of being alone.

_Don't forget about me, Veronica._

She nearly falls off the horse at the sensation of Lilly's sharp little chin pushing into her shoulder, thin arms looped loosely around her waist. Janette looks across at her with one eyebrow raised as Veronica gropes around to assure herself it isn't real. Lilly practically shakes with amusement. 

_Ghost, Veronica, remember? Though I gotta say – thinking of giving up on the fashion gig. Figure you need relationship advice more._

Veronica rolls her eyes before it occurs to her not to. “Where were you last week?” she mutters, and Lilly's giggle is positively salacious. _Watching, darling. Watching!_

She nearly chokes on the bubble of laughter that rises up, and tries not to psychoanalyse the moment. Maybe she externalised her need for approval of such an unorthodox sexual relationship, or maybe she does have a ghost sitting behind her, making orgasm noises into her ear. Veronica can't find it in her to deny herself Lilly as she sets out for Neptune. She's lost too many people in her life, and she refuses to apologise for clinging to them when she can.

_You'll see them again._

Lilly's words are serious this time, and surprisingly compassionate. _I can't tell you when, but you will, Veronica. When you most need to. But in the meantime, you just gotta get on with it._

“Home to Neptune, huh?”

 _Go Pirates_.

_fin_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This story was meant to be the start of a series of shortish oneshots depicting slices of Veronica's post blackout life. Bass and Miles turned out to have a lot more to say (and do) than I can ever have anticipated, so ... not so short. I will return to this world again with a jump into the far future ... when Bass, Miles and Charlie take a trip to California to muster support for the war against the Patriots.


End file.
